Time is always of the essence for me. I rarely have enough of it. Many authors spend days, weeks or even months, travelling to research their settings, and while I do sometimes wander farther afield, due to a lack of spare time, it’s too tempting to glance out of my window and use what I have for inspiration.With a house that backs onto a wooded area, a river and a public footpath, there is so much to see and hear, especially in the summer months when I can salt myself away behind shrubbery and hedges, eavesdropping the conversations of passing ramblers.
The setting for The Woman in the Woods is a combination of where I live now, and the place where I grew up. My childhood home was close to The Cleveland Hills which is in the north west of the North Yorkshire Moors. As children, we would regularly disappear up there for the day, climbing and exploring as if we were the only people on earth. Maybe there’s something in me that is drawn to nature and that’s why I ended up living next to the Teesdale Way. Or perhaps I was attempting to replicate the halcyon days of my idyllic childhood.
However, forests, whilst being beautiful, can also hide secrets.In my book, I imagined the thickest part of the woods with a small cottage situated in the middle, a place where somebody could escape to at the end of the day; a place far away from the woes of the world, which is exactly what my main character did.Her cottage was a place where she hunkered down; a place that allowed her anonymity. Because things happened in her life that scared her. Unexplainable things.
Dark unspeakable things. During the day, the Teesdale Way and the Cleveland Hills are areas of outstanding beauty, but once night falls, they change. With shifting shadows and screeches of owls and the local wildlife ringing out into the cool night air, they become dark sinister places. I hope that readers get this sense of the unknown, that danger is lurking in the darkness, when they read my book. The setting plays such a huge part in many crime and thriller novels, and I like to think I captured that sense of menace in The Woman in the Woods.
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