INSPIRATIONS

school, and they are a little haven of peace in an otherwise busy town. I have several friends who own allotments and I realized there was a vibrant, interesting community there which would make a perfect background for a good story. I had been wanting to write about how a young widow finds love again, and giving her a new life that involves gardening fitted in really well, because I think growing things and watching the year’s cycle are natural healers. Strictly Love was born from two different things. Firstly from a hideous experience my husband, who like Mark is a dentist, had when he was first working, when a patient accused him of crowning the wrong tooth. My husband hadn’t done it of course, but had a stressful few months and had to endure a hearing in front of the local dental group. It struck me that this would be a good premise for a story. The second strand came from having gone to salsa classes – it was absolutely apparent that with more women then men attending, dancing classes were the best place for a single bloke to meet women. So I made Mark a divorcé and had his best friend Rob drag him along to dancing classes, where they get to meet the two heroines, Katie and Emily. My editor suggested my next book should be a Christmassy one, and at first I was really stumped. But then, one day in the swimming pool (I can thoroughly recommend swimming to those of the creative persuasion – I get lots of my ideas in the pool!) it suddenly dawned on me that with nine years and countless nativities behind me, writing a story about putting on a nativity was an obvious choice. So Last Christmas was born. But it ended up being about a lot more then that, as I also took inspiration from the blogging world and gave one of my heroines an alter ego, The Happy Homemaker. I thought it would be quite funny if Cat (who like me has four children) were to have a completely chaotic home life. Cat and her husband Noel live in London, where some of the action takes place, but I decided I wanted my nativity to happen in Shropshire, where my mother lives. So I created a fictional town called Hope Christmas, with a local lord, who lives in Hopesay Manor which was inspired by a combination of Plowden Hall, Walcott Manor and Stokesay Castle. I took my camera up there and took loads of photos as an aide memoire. My next book, The Bridesmaid’s Pact was also borne out of a suggestion from my editor. As she has recently got married she was keen on all things wedding related and suggested I wrote a book about weddings. My initial thoughts were that it was going to be a light and fluffy book about the happiest day in a girl’s life, but somehow it hasn’t quite ended up like that! My starting point this time was four friends, who make a pact aged eight, having watched Diana and Charles getting married, that when they grow up they will be each other’s bridesmaids. Of course, when they grow up, things don’t quite go according to plan... I love gardening and gardens, so it was with pleasure I returned to gardening as a theme when writing 'The Summer Season', as the growing cycle is a perfect analogy for rebirth and renewal of love. Plus gardening in the early part of the year,was perfect research for writing the spring sections of the book! As a child one of my favourite books was The Secret Garden, and I have since been fascinated by secret gardens. So I really liked the idea of having Kezzie stumble across one. I was inspired in the first instance by a touching story my father in law told me about the previous owner of the house my husband grew up in. When he bought the house, the first owner had a rose garden planted as a wedding present for his wife. She died before him, and eventually the man became old and too frail to tend the garden and The Secret Garden it fell into ruin. But as he lay dying whenever he asked about it, the people caring for him told him it still looked beautiful. I thought that was very touching and sad, and it gave me the seed of an idea. I decided that Edward would create a knot garden for Lily, because it could be invested with meaning, and although I have taken huge liberties with the growing cycle (I said I was keen on gardening, I didn’t say I knew a lot about it!), I carefully chose the flowers he plants for what they represent. Further inspiration has come from two other gardens: one belonging to family in Germany which has a pond, a water feature of a millstone, and various stone monuments dotted about (they even have a signpost to Berlin!). The picture I have doesn’t do it much justice, but you can see that my children enjoyed playing in it! The other garden is a truly secret garden we discovered by accident on our way to school one day. I’d been walking past it for years and then one of the children decided to peep over the wall. The tree isn’t the oak Children in Karl and Roland’s garden which I have Kezzie climb up in the book, but the view she sees is very similar. A very strong thread in The Summer Season also comes as a result of studying my own family history. I have in my possession two letters belonging to my grandmother. The first was written to her after a friend (possibly fiancé) was killed in battle and poignantly describes a line of people sweeping the battlefield to search for bodies. The second describes the battle of Nieuport-le-Bains in which my grandfather was taken prisoner. I drew heavily on both as inspiration for the sections of the book dealing with the First World War. I have always known that I had two great uncles who died in that war, but no one in the family knew View of the secret garden anything about how or why. Thanks to clever It even has its own secret door! research undertaken by my brother in law, I now know the youngest, Ernest Clark died of fever in 1916, while the oldest, Alfred Clark, died in the battle of the Sambre, the last battle of the war. It was the same battle in which Wilfred Owen died, and ironically they were both killed on 4 November, a Letter about Jack Towns Letter about Grandfather week before the end of the war. Thomas I cannot begin to understand how that would affect you, but it made me think about what my grandmother, Jemima Clark had been through, as she’d also lost twin babies at six weeks old. Though Lily is a very different character, I drew on Jemima’s experiences to tell her story. Alfred Clark’s grave As I write contemporary fiction, I didn’t want the story to be set in the past, but liked the idea of weaving a modern story in with the old, and though it has given me headaches at times, I very much enjoyed telling Joel’s, Lauren’s and Kezzie’s story along with Edward’s and Lily’s. It’s been an interesting journey, and I hope you enjoy the result as much as I enjoyed writing it. Our secret garden