I loved writing The Woman Who Turned Her Life Around. Filled with nostalgia and 80s flashbacks, it was a little different for me as my novels are usually firmly rooted in the present day. Here’s what inspired me to write this story.
The Yorkshire setting
As an adult I’ve only been back once or twice – but the backdrop to my childhood was a tiny West Yorkshire village called Goose Eye. As there were only five or six kids of varying ages, we all hung out together, building dens, roaming through the woods and swimming in the pond that fed the water mill. In our village alone there were two huge, decaying Victorian mills which we kids claimed as our highly treacherous playgrounds. I loved delving into those memories for this book.
80s nostalgia
In my novel, Josie and Shane played together in an 80s indie band. Despite their big dreams, it all ended horribly and the three friends never saw each other again. Until now, that is. Ravi, their third bandmate, has died – leaving Josie and Shane a last request: to retrace the route of the tour they never managed to finish.
For the 80s flashbacks it was such a treat to remember the details of that time. I was born in the mid-sixties but came of age in the 80s – leaving home at 17, living in bedsits and shared flats with new friends I’d made working in the offices of Jackie and Just Seventeen magazines. I cobbled together a ‘look’ inspired by Clare Grogan, the Jam and Bananarama, if you can imagine that combination! It was an era of DIY dressing, making our own clothes (I once made a skirt from a pillowcase) and scouring charity shops when they still had great stuff in them.
Make-up was Miners, Rimmel, Barry M and Boots 17. Cheap – and definitely cheerful. And hair was savagely bleached, teased into gravity-defying shapes and sprayed until rock solid with an entire can of Elnett. In 1984, I obviously thought I was the cat’s whiskers!
Anyone could start a band
I played a saxophone extremely badly. But that didn’t stop me squawking and honking in various bands in the 80s. We played in rank pubs around Dundee, where I lived at the time. It was more about friendship, and doing something fun and exciting, than any hopes of record deals or stardom (just as well really!).
All of these memories fizzled away in my brain until I came up with the idea of two bandmates – who had always loved each other – being thrown back together again.
For Josie and Shane, it’s a road trip that will make or break them. I hope you love it!
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