Each novel tells a character’s story but there are themes and motifs that pop up in one or more of my novels or short fiction.

Kindness

The book delicately reveals the dedication of partners and the kindness of strangers’

What inspires me is that time and again when we set our faces to life’s challenges we can find resilience and strength. Despite everything, we have the capacity to find life enriching, exciting, rewarding.

And what continues to give me hope is how willing we are as individuals and as a community to reach out to others. We find it in ourselves to offer a moment of kindness, a hand of friendship, a gesture of compassion.

It is moments like these which can change a life – not always in a big way but sometimes, yes.

Over a cuppa

Characters sit alone in a café or meet up with friends; they gather round a kitchen table, curl up on the sofa or ease themselves into armchairs. They carry rattling cups on trays into the living room or wander with a mug out into the garden. It is an order shouted above the buzz of conversation, a ceremony of tea bags and teapots or a kettle poured over a couple of spoonfuls of instant.

A cuppa is yearned for, huddled over or left to go cold. Some are spilled, pushed away or forgotten; lips are burned, glasses steam up, hands feel warmed.

Characters find a private moment to wonder about life or lean forward, eager to know what the other is thinking. They share secrets and thoughts or cover up the silences. They say sorry. They cry. They laugh or are comforted.

A cuppa is never far away when I am writing either! One of life’s small pleasures.

This photo is is precious encouragement from author, Marianne Wiggins, when I was unsure of where my first novel was going.

Looking out

We meet Cecillie in Laughing as they Chased us as she sits on her balcony looking out on the French city she is getting to know. In The Other Lover, Laura describes the scene outside the window to her dying friend Rose who spends much of her time in her room at the top of the house in Brighton. Reclusive Abbie watches her new neighbour’s comings and goings from the safety of her spyglass in the door in Never Stop Looking; while in Summer Circles, Hannah enjoys looking down on the familiar, well-loved morning routine of her mother and their family dog in the garden.

It is about seeing but not being seen, about being apart from and yet connected to the world around them. Writing is a solitary business and if I can, I will always write looking out of a window.

Home

Home and place often play a significant role in my character’s lives.

In to begin …, I talk about how my first novel, Laughing as they Chased us started with an interest in exploring the different ways people connect to a place and how that forms their character and informs their actions.

In other novels, home is bound closely with the spirit of the characters. In The Other Lover, Laura is deeply connected to her hometown but perhaps part of her attraction to the older couple she becomes involved with is the life they lived abroad before she met them. In Never Stop Looking, home for Abbie has become a physical sanctuary but an emotional prison. In Summer Circles, the secluded family house is a source of strength for Hannah and her mother but it may also be holding them too tightly.

Although my settings are often based on a real place or a blend of places, it is the character of the setting, its atmosphere and what it means to the characters which I work hard to make real and to resonate with readers.

In ‘The Other Lover’ I created the ‘Monkey Park’ in Brighton and when a reader said that they loved the idea of such a place, I couldn’t have been happier.

When people ask where I come from I tell them I don’t have a home town. I grew up in an Armed Forces family and after I was born in Berlin we moved eight times while I was at school. It didn’t stop there, I have moved house as an adult many times since. What makes me feel at home in a place is nature.