The Best Christmas Present of All
by Ali Harris


I’m a sucker for old-fashioned values and each year I desperately want Christmas to feel like it does in the classic American movies, or when I was a child. 

Like Evie Taylor, my main character in 'Miracle on Regent Street' and 'A Vintage Christmas', I yearn to come out of shops laden with beautifully wrapped boxes, tipping my felt hat and snuggling my hands into a fur muff as I head off for afternoon tea somewhere lovely (Lily’s Tea Room at Hardy’s, perhaps!) having bought each of my loved-ones some perfectly elegant personalised gift. I scour small shops and antiques emporiums, trying to find the perfect stocking fillers for my two small children. Wooden toys, books, board games, tins of sweets, tangerines, classic Fisher Price toys and a bag of chocolate coins all feature this year.

Each year I immerse myself in classic Christmas movies like 'It’s a Wonderful Life' and 'Miracle on 34th Street'. I string popcorn and cranberries and marshmallows on the tree with my kids like Eloise in the classic 1950s children’s books and make gingerbread with them whilst listening to Frank Sinatra and Bing Crosby. Then I get stressed about how much work I have to do and end up staying up all night to make up for indulging my festive fads.

I also find myself spending a lot of my time moaning about how technology has changed our festive future forever. I refuse to internet shop and tell my kids Father Christmas doesn’t deliver gadgets (my four-year-old son has asked for an iPad which he will not be getting). One of my two-year-old daughter’s favourite presents from last year was a vintage 1980s Woolworths Fairground that was mine when I was a child. We have such fun playing with it; each time we do I feel like I’m at once recreating and reliving my childhood Christmases. It’s like I have one foot in the past and one in the present…

The Present. It’s funny that we call it that, isn’t it? Since having kids I’ve become aware just how quickly time passes. I may yearn for bygone days when I spent Christmas Eve peering up at the stars hoping to catch a glimpse of Santa and his reindeer instead of manically running around, prepping and cooking and wrapping and writing, but then I have to remind myself that what I have now, in this moment, in the present is the best gift of all. Being Santa Claus to my kids, celebrating with family and friends, making new memories is what it’s all about. So what if I end up getting their presents online? With the time I saved I may even take them to see that new Disney Christmas film they want to see. 

After all, it’ll probably be considered a good old-fashioned classic one day…

She may be alive, she may be dead, but either way she haunts you. She’s the Other Woman... 

But you can do nothing about her relationship with your man, for it happened in the past. She might have been his first wife, his childhood sweetheart or a live-in girlfriend, but you can’t help thinking: ‘Did he love her more than me?’ Or - worse - 'Does he love her still?’

These days we’re generally more relaxed about our partner having a romantic history, and expect him to be accepting of ours, too. It’s unusual now to find a man with 'no previous owner', so to speak; commonplace for them to have been actually married. This doesn’t mean though, that we don’t occasionally feel mild irritation, a frisson of rivalry, if our man even mentions his ex-, never mind if she actually appears at the front door to drop off the stepchildren. Sometimes hot jealousy can damage our relationship with him, or in some cases destroy it.

There’s a long and fascinating tradition of fictional first wives. In Jane Eyre (1847) Rochester’s first wife Bertha is still very much alive and kicking, a madwoman held captive in a Victorian attic. It’s interesting that this storyline still works in the 1920s for Edith in Downton Abbey. It wasn’t until 1937 in the UK that one could divorce an insane spouse. And what of the poor mad first wives?  In Wide Sargasso Sea (1966) the novelist Jean Rhys gives rein to her imagination about Bertha Rochester’s story.

Daphne du Maurier’s gothic classic Rebecca (1938) owes a huge debt to Jane Eyre . In it the second Mrs de Winter, a plain mouse of a girl, fearful, over-protected, believes herself a poor successor to the beautiful and talented Rebecca, whom she’s certain that her husband Maxim still mourns. A modern  version of Maxim would be sufficiently unbuttoned to explain properly, I hope. At least these days he would probably have divorced Rebecca as soon as he’d found out how monstrous she was.

My new novel, The Silent Tide, concerns a beloved first wife who dies young.  In 1950s London the novelist Hugh Morton marries his editor, Isabel, but although they adore each other the marriage quickly runs into trouble.  The twist is that Jacqueline, who is to become Hugh’s second wife after Isabel is lost in the floods of January 1953, is already waiting in the wings, dumbly adoring of Hugh and married to someone else because she couldn’t have him.  Although Jacqueline eventually nails Hugh, the memory of Isabel is to haunt their marriage.

Hugh Morton may have loved his first wife, Isabel, better than his second, but both wives had an even more formidable rival for this affections: Hugh's mother. Friction between mothers- and daughters-in-law - there's a knotty subject for another time!

The Airport Safari

I have a confession to make, more of a declaration really – I love airports.  Not in a nerdy, sit at the end of the runway with a flask of tea and a copy of Aviation Weekly ogling incoming aircraft kind of way. What I love is the excitement of impending journey, the promise of adventure. There’s lots to do:  shopping for one, people-watching for another. I liken it to being on safari: there are so many different species of traveller roaming around.

One such species is the Solo Business Traveller with their determined ‘I just want to get going, let me through’ expressions and demeanour. I suspect they must hate waiting in line behind those once-a-year flyers that arrive slack-jawed at security as if they have just walked into an operating theatre in the middle of a delicate procedure. The Once-a-Years usually have metal in every pocket and enough liquid, gels and pastes to bring down an Airbus A380.

But using their keen eye for spotting the line with the least potential delays, once the Solo Business Traveller gets past the Once-a-Years, they sail though security with a military precision that goes hand in hand with frequent flying. Belt, watch, bag coins into tray one. Laptop, mobile phone and jacket into tray two, before breezing unfazed through the metal detector.

Another member of the airport ‘Big Five’ are The Lads on Tour - especially easy to spot by their broad rictus grins. It’s the kind of unsustainable smile that starts to hurt after a couple of minutes and suggests: ‘I can’t believe I have no responsibilities for the next few days only to drink/watch sports/play sports/eat/score’. You will always see them in the bar drinking and laughing loudly.   A very different breed of traveller is the Shiny Ringed Honeymooners – most common throughout the summer months. Alone as a couple for the first time since they said ‘I do’, they only have eyes for one another and are easily identified by their bright, shiny wedding rings.  Then there’s The Hen Nighters, a rowdy crew who all sport identical day-glo T-shirts. You can always pick out the ‘Hen’ by looking for the one displaying ‘L’ plates, mini wedding veil and fake male genitalia.

I’m certain the BBC will do a ‘wildlife’ style documentary on it all at some stage. In fact, I can already imagine David Attenborough’s seasoned, knowledgeable tones doing the voice over: ‘Here we find the common Snowy White Sun-worshipper. Once a year these magnificent creatures migrate south in search of sunshine and cheap booze. Within a few hours of reaching their destination they will try to absorb a year’s worth of vitamin D by basking in the sun, eventually turning an angry shade of red. Yet, these amazing creatures have even found a naturally occurring and readily available source of painkiller for such an injury – cheap beer.’

Inevitably once you find yourself at the boarding gate you start to recognise other familiar sights: the loud bickering couple that sat on the car-park bus in front of you, the laden-down family with the seat-kicking screaming toddler at the next table in the terminal restaurant.   Like safari animals, our destinies seem to merge as we all migrate towards our mutual journey.  And you just know where that seat kicking toddler is going to be sitting…

'Finding Lucky Santangelo' by Jackie Collins            

As a kid growing up I was an avid reader, devouring all kinds of stories and also making up my own – books filled with outrageous characters, yes, even at thirteen I was into creating racy exciting stories!

In the beginning my author of choice was the fabulous Enid Blyton. What a marvellous storyteller! From The Magic Faraway Tree to The Famous Five, Enid Blyton allowed my fervent imagination to run riot. And run riot it did. I started writing books at the age of ten – fun stories about teenage angst and all their problems. Writing was my passion, it was all I wanted to do. In school I came bottom in everything and top in composition. Yes! I had a vision of where my future would take me. . . all the way to the top of the bestseller list! This was my dream, but I never thought it would come true. And now – many years later, I have published 30 books – all of them bestsellers!

After moving on from Enid Blyton, I delved into the world of more sophisticated fiction – Harold Robbins and Mickey Spillane, both brilliant storytellers. But wait a minute, what was with the females in their books? They were either sex-crazed bitches or total wimps. They were either lurking in the bedroom or busy in the kitchen – nothing in between. Hmm. . . sex or cooking – not good enough for me. 

            

I hated what I perceived as a blatant double standard. I wanted to write women who could stand up to any man and do ANYTHING! I wanted to write female characters who were smart, beautiful, sexually equal, and most of all – strong.

            

And so eventually I created the character of Lucky Santangelo. Ah. . . Lucky. My fierce, fabulous, wildly beautiful Lucky – a woman who can achieve absolutely anything.

            

Born in my book Chances to the sweetly gentle Maria, and the notorious Gino Santangelo – Lucky is adored by both her parents, until her world crumbles, when, at five years of age, she discovers her mother’s murdered body floating on a lilo in the family swimming pool.

            

From then on everything changes. Instead of being her loving father, Gino becomes her strict protector – making sure nothing bad happens to her. Locked up in their Bel Air mansion, Lucky rebels. She wants to be free to choose her own path in life. She wants to enter the family business and build hotels in Vegas, exactly like Gino. Her brother, Dario, could not care less about carrying on the family tradition. So Lucky informs Gino that she is the one who will work beside him. However, as a total chauvinist, Gino says no way – girls must be married and have babies. And so the Santangelo family saga begins. . .

        

Now eight books and three mini-series later, Lucky is still my most popular character. She’s also the woman I would like to be in another life. Strong, invincible, exciting and fun! I think my readers love Lucky because she does and says all the things they would like to, but don’t quite have the courage. That’s okay, for Lucky does it for them!

       

I am currently writing The Santangelos – having recently completed Confessions of a Wild Child – all about Lucky’s crazy and uninhibited teenage years. And so, the saga continues.  Keep on reading, and I’ll keep on writing.

Love and friendship always,

 Jackie Collins

Visit Jackie’s website at www.jackiecollins.com, and follow her on Pinterest and Twitter at JackieJCollins and Facebook at www.facebook.com/jackiecollins . 

'A feast for the senses' by Rebecca Chance

Cinnamon-perfumed neck wraps, guava and mango Bellinis, Bulgari green tea toiletries, an aromatherapy room perfume menu in the hotel reception, salty sea air wafting through the white muslin draperies around the beach cabanas…I’d go back to Mexico for the delicious scents alone. And then there were the exquisite tastes, the beautiful sights, the soft sounds of the sea...Starting with that guava Bellini, offered to me by a smiling, white-jacketed waiter as I walked into the deliciously cool reception of the El Dorado Karisma hotel, my two-week stay at the resort was a feast for the senses.  

Technically, I was actually working: I was on the Mayan Riviera, staying in the smaller, very deluxe Casitas Royale section of the El Dorado, to research crucial parts of my latest book, Killer Queens. My hapless heroine, Lori, on honeymoon with her new husband, the King of Herzoslovakia, discovers, in the middle of paradise, that being a queen may actually not be all she expected it to be…and the contrast between her increasingly gloomy emotions and the sheer beauty and serenity of her surroundings was perfect dramatic material.

So much so that it hardly felt like work. I would get up every morning to a breakfast of omelette and bright tropical fruit. Sitting on the terrace of my swim-up suite, still in my silk dressing gown, I would write around two thousand words of the book, and then organise notes on all the amazing experiences I was having in order to use them for the Mexico-set scenes. My wonderful butlers, Elizabeth, Pablo and Liliana, organised me with crisp and sunny efficiency.

Everyone made sure I had plenty to write about for the book: I visited the temple at Chichen Itza, one of the new seven wonders of the world; swam in a cenote, one of the many underground sinkholes which are like magical secret hidden lakes in grottoes; and travelled to Tulum, where the Mayan ruins perch majestically on the edge of a cliff. I ate perfectly-grilled salmon for lunch at the Maroma hotel, and dined at Le Chique at another Karisma resort, the Azul Sensatori hotel. A molecular gastronomy 26-course tasting dinner which was one of the best meals I’ve ever eaten in my life, with locally-sourced, sensationally inventive food. I toured the resort’s huge greenhouses and Juan Carlos, the urbane and charming manager, gave me a VIP circuit of the Casitas, including a view of the two crocodiles, Pancho and Maria.

And of course, I had lots of time off! Even after writing, I had a good hour on one of the floating lilos in my private swimming pool, which led to the ‘lazy river’ that circled the horseshoe of low white Casitas suites, which in turn led to the swim-up bar and the thatch-covered terrace on which I could lounge in the shade on a double-bed cabana, sipping vino espumoso and contemplating where to go for lunch.  I did try to hit the gym most days, God knows, which was very important as there are, quite seriously, more lovely places to lie down and stretch out at the Casitas Royale than I have ever experienced in my life.

On my patio, for instance, there was a daybed comfortable enough to sleep through the night on. Then I had two loungers by my little swim-up pool, and two lilos floating on the water. Just our own exquisite Casitas garden had hammocks, cabanas and loungers, such an abundance that nobody ever had to commit the vulgarity of ‘bagsieing’ a favourite place: one would always be available. Along the stunning white beach were more cabanas, their muslin curtains billowing in the wind like sailboats, extra beach towels ready-rolled on their mattresses. 

Everything about this holiday-cum-research trip spoke of abundance: all food and drink are included, which I absolutely love. Karisma calls it ‘Gourmet Inclusive’, and the bliss of the ‘Gourmet’ part is that it isn’t overwhelming. The portions are small, balanced, delicious: you’d have to work hard to overeat, which, on a beach holiday, is ideal. No guilt, no temptation to pig out; from the refined elegance of the two D’Italia restaurants, to the fresh, bright flavours of grilled fish at Jojo’s on the beach, I never woke up the morning after the night before feeling too stuffed to wear a bikini.

The beach bar in Flamingos, the ‘horseshoe’ in which my swim-up suite was set, opened at ten am and closed at five pm: perfect timings. Vegas and Cancun are there for people who want to drink around the clock; the Casitas Royale cater to visitors who want to relax in the supremely lovely sense that everything is in balance. Food, drink, exercise – I borrowed a bicycle and had some lovely rides around the resort – sun, sea, and maybe just one more cucumber Bellini. And possibly the occasional strawberry popsicle or ice-cream scoop at tea time. Oscar Wilde’s line about being able to resist everything except temptation is very apposite when it comes to a lovely cold afternoon ice-cream!

I came home with the entire Mexico section of the book perfectly worked out in my head, the words dancing around, eager to be written. It centres around a world-class massage that Queen Lori has in one of the Sky Massage rooms, built high over the beach: Felipe, the shaman at the spa, creates a truly moving experience that is the moment at which Lori realises the extent of the mistake she’s made. The ceremony before the massage, rose-petals scattering into the water, the burning of aromatic herbs in a bowl made from volcanic rock, will be even more powerful than Lori could have imagined, crystallising in her mind the conflict she’s experiencing. I could never have imagined or written that crucial scene, or so many others, before my visit to the El Dorado Casitas Royale: it’s a magic place. And as a writer, it does go to show how essential research is. There’s no substitute in the world for visiting the place you’re describing, seeing it come to life before your eyes: the brilliance of the colours, the tastes of the food, the beauty of the country, the cinnamon-scent of the neck wrap… the trouble is, though, that in describing it like this I want to live it all over again!

(You can enter to win the amazing holiday described by Rebecca Chance in this article and in Killer Queens by buying a copy of the book and following the instructions inside.)

'Launching a book into the world'

Milly Johnson

Sometimes I think that the actual writing of books is the easiest part of the whole process.  Books are like small children – you have to celebrate their arrival into the world with a party (any excuse).  You have to ‘wet their head’ with champagne (more any excuse).  You have to support them, show off about them, insist the world sees them as your wonderful creation.  My books take 9 months from conception to birth – the parallels are too obvious to ignore. Every book is precious to me, I like them all for different reasons, but I feel that I shouldn’t have a favourite. I glow when I see their photographs in various places.  I beam when I hear good things about them.  I snarl when other people slag them off and my hackles rise.

But a new book coming out is a great excuse for a party.  And champagne.  And flowers.  Publishers send you a bouquet on publication day – and they are every bit as sweet to receive as the flowers you get in a maternity ward.  And it has become custom to open a bottle of fizz on the big day – although my little tipple is Pellers Ice Wine which is the best sort of bubbly I’ve ever drank.  Nothing else will do.

I’m sure that I go over the top when I release a book  (‘You?  Go over the top, Mill?  Never!’  say my friends with a smirk).  My launches get bigger with every passing year.  But it’s a great excuse to indulge myself all things stationery.  I am a totally stationery geek.  Hobbycraft is heaven as far as I am concerned.  And having a ‘theme’ for my book allows me to go and buy stickers, colour-coordinated ribbon, design bookmarks, even buy stamps and ink.  My house is currently full of umbrella stickers, umbrella confetti, ribbons with umbrellas on them, bags with umbrellas on them, chocolates in the shape of umbrellas, bookmarks with umbrellas on them… even napkins with umbrellas on them.  Doesn’t that cost?  I hear you ask.  Yes, and it’s a marvellous spend. I can’t stop myself. I know that when I have my launch evening, I’ll have a room full of people stuffed with cake, sandwiches, holding goody bags and hopefully when they get home, they’ll start reading the book with a jolly heart.

But I’ll let you into a secret.  I started the whole ‘goody bag’ thing with my first book because I was so terrified that no one would turn up to my launch party that I prepared to bribe them with presents.  Now, even though I know they’ll turn up because they’ve bought tickets, the custom has to continue.  Us writers are superstitious creatures and any break in custom could result in disaster.  It has to continue.  Shame.

Hence the fizz will be bought, Hobbycraft will be visited, cakes will be distributed and goody bags will be supplied at every launch I ever do.  It’s hard work.  I should have muscles like Arnie Schwarzenegger with all the boxes of goodies I have to carry into my launches.  But I wouldn’t have it any other way.  Nor could I.  It’s my lucky ritual. And my child deserves only the best.

The Allure of Ruins by Santa Montefiore

Santa Montefiore

High up on the cliffs, overlooking the Irish Sea, is an old stone castle. Its empty eyes stare vacantly out at a horizon that is always the same yet forever changing in colour and cloud. One of the towers stands hollow but proud while the other has long since crumbled into the ocean. Sea gulls build nests where once the garrison stood. The wind sweeps in off the water, damp and cold, and slips through holes in the walls to touch the grassy spaces where long ago carpets were laid, fires were lit and banquets served. I’m sucked in by my curiosity and swallowed into the mystery of the past.  I wander enraptured by thoughts of what it must have been like centuries ago when those rooms reverberated with voices and the patter of feet, and those windows were full of faces, scanning the same unchanging horizon for ships. 
Ruins have always fascinated me. I want to be left alone to feast on the possibilities, to soak up the sense of history, to feel the vibrations of the past in those silent and chilly walls. But what is it about ruins that makes them so compelling? Do they perhaps resonate with the deepest part of us that knows that one day our bodies, too, will be empty shells, and our own lives relegated to history? Is our curiosity propelled by the mystery of our own mortality? Do they focus our minds on the transience of our lives and the inevitability of our deaths?
When I gaze up at those ancient walls I like to imagine the people who once dwelt there.  Their lives were perhaps long and vital and full of adventure.  They, like us, believed they were immortal. But where are they now? What is left of them? Those who kept them alive in their memories are also dead. Unless they were important historical figures, they will be lost forever like foam on the sea.  Ruins make me question my purpose here. If I am to leave the earth without a trace of ever having lived, what is it all for?
I wonder what those windows have witnessed. If only those walls could speak. But they’re not sharing their stories and neither is the wind that moans around the corners like ghosts of the dead, desperate not to be forgotten.  It fills me with a melancholy that is somehow pleasurable and I wallow in it as my imagination expands and I begin to weave a story of my own.
My new novel, Secrets of the Lighthouse, is a tale that unravels the mystery of a ruined lighthouse as well as a castle which has been boarded up and abandoned.  I chose Connemara as my setting because Ireland is intrinsically enigmatic and hauntingly beautiful. Every morning I hurried to my desk to indulge my love of ruins and nostalgia with greedy delight, and did what ruins always compel me to do – breathe life back into them again.

            

Truth and Fiction in Infinite Sky by C.J. Flood

C.J. Flood

A lot of people ask me how autobiographical Infinite Sky is, and the truth is, it's hard to say. The story begins a few weeks after thirteen-year-old Iris Dancy's mother leaves the family to go travelling around North Africa. Iris's home life quickly falls into a state of chaos, with her dad struggling to cope, and her older brother angry about being left behind. When a family of Irish Travellers set up camp in the Dancy's paddock overnight, these already high levels of tension increase. Iris finds the Travellers fascinating, especially their teenaged son, but her dad and brother want the Travellers gone, and fast. Over the course of a summer, events unfold that change these two families lives forever.

I started writing Infinite Sky four years ago, the summer before I started a Masters in Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia. It began as a sort of mystery story, with Iris uncovering clues about the whereabouts of her mother, and the type of person she was. For some reason, it didn't work. In workshop, my fellow students said it lacked dimension. I'm not sure why, but on arriving at my first creative writing course, I seemed to have forgotten how to write.

After a particularly harsh workshop, my tutor asked what I was trying to say with my novel. I came out with a strange jumble of things – still unsure what I wanted to say. One of them was that I wanted to write about the effects of a divorce on children. My tutor recommended I go back to writing what I knew, and I began mining my experience as an adolescent. I wrote scenes about my parents' separation and my relationships with my brother and parents. My classmates liked these scenes, and gradually, I began working the two ideas together. Using the truth of my experience of a separation, but jazzing it up with exaggeration and intrigue whenever I fancied. 

The resulting novel has a lot of truth in it. The setting is the house I grew up in, exactly, and the father character looks and sounds an awful lot like my dad, though he says and does things that my dad wouldn't dream of. There's so much of my dad in Thomas's characterisation that I was nervous of him reading it. My dad collected towers of five pees when I was a kid and had pockets full of sawdust. He still smells like wool and sweat and grass when he's finished work. Thomas, like my dad, is a landscape gardener. I stole so much! (Luckily my dad loved the book, and hasn't disowned me). The mum characterisation was a bit different. I had to use my imagination to create Anna and her reasons for leaving her kids. (My mum moved up the road during my parents' separation, whilst Iris's mum moves to Tunisia.) As such, Anna quite naturally evolved into someone apart from my mum, though she has the same strength and positivity, and a kind of glamour about her, too. Iris's brother, Sam, started out as based on my older brother, but he quickly became his own person. Being very close with his mum in the story, he takes her absence especially hard. He falls in with local troublemakers, and takes up fighting. All very unlike the peace-loving, long-haired skater brother of my teens.

The most fictional element of the novel is the family of Travellers. I did a lot of research to create them, though in the end, they are just people. Trick, Iris's friend/love interest takes a lot of traits from the boys I have loved thus far in my life. So you see, the question of how autobiographical Infinite Sky is, is a difficult one! Truth and fiction are so tightly woven together that it is an intense read for family and friends, and from what I hear from reviewers and readers, for strangers too.

It's All About the Setting... by Susan Elliot Wright

Author Susan Elliot Wright

As a reader, I enjoy novels with a strong sense of place because I want to be able to visualise the setting, to see the characters and events against a backdrop, whether it’s a grey, concrete city full of high-rise buildings, a wild, windswept stretch of moorland, or the golden sands of a sundrenched beach. I like the setting to provide some sense of atmosphere, too, so I can really get into the ‘mood’ of the story, and if the setting can reflect some of the themes, better still!

My novel The Things We Never Said has three different settings: south-east London, where I grew up; Sheffield, where I’ve lived for the past eight years; and Hastings, a coastal resort I’ve visited many times. The decision to use these settings was partly a pragmatic one – they were places I knew, so I’d be able to describe them effectively and they’d be easy to research. But writing about places with which I was personally familiar also allowed me to reflect on how they may have affected the way my characters acted and reacted, and also how my characters might be affected by being away from the places they felt close to.

I knew when I started the novel that I wanted to write about the sea. One of the major themes in The Things We Never Said is nature v. nurture, and I felt that the sheer, unceasing force of the tides would help reflect the power of nature. For me, the sea also represents mystery; I’m fascinated by the idea that we only see the surface, and that as we watch the perpetual movement of the waves, there is a vast, unseen world beneath, a secret place that remains hidden from all except a few curious divers - secrets are a big part of the novel, too!

The weather is, I feel, very much part of setting. Like the sea, it’s useful in evoking the power of nature as well as helping to create a particular mood. What’s more, it’s great fun to write about! But it was only as I began to write that I realised just how important the weather was going to be. As I wrote about the freak hurricane that devastated Sheffield in 1962 and the incredibly harsh winter caused the sea to freeze in 1963, it became clear that these two extreme weather events had a huge part to play in the development of the plot, creating twists and turns I hadn’t anticipated.

This has made me realise that setting in a novel should never be neglected. It can be as important as the characters themselves, and can even be a character - in fact, when I think about The Things We Never Said, I see four images at the same time: Maggie, Jonathan, the hurricane, and the vicious winter.

Setting is important to the plot in the novel I’m currently working on, too. Part of the story is again set on the South coast, only this time I’m writing about stifling, searing, suffocating heat. Which makes a change!