Although the village of Malvern End in my books is a fictional place, the Malverns themselves are very much real, as are many of the locations in the books.
As a child I lived on a farm at the foot of the Malvern Hills which became Malvern Farm in my books. We only had Old Leah as a direct neighbour who lived in a little pink cottage on the track up to the farmhouse – a cottage that I moved Noah, Malvern Farm’s shepherd, into. We were pretty isolated at the farm, especially when the snow came and the drifts filled the drive, not that a bit of snow ever stopped us. I remember one year Dad piled us into the bucket of the digger and drove us across the fields to get to school – only to find it shut!
When I was seventeen, I fell in love with the son of a farmer. My father-in-law (as he was to become five years later) farmed hops as the main source of income, but he also had other crops, cows and sheep and it was all hands on deck.
My experiences on both farms were obvious inspirations for my books but my knowledge of farming, certainly in modern times, was iffy at best. I wanted to make sure that the farming aspect of the books was paramount and that I was as authentic as I could be in my representation so I threw myself into research.
A local sheep farmer has been kind enough to let me shadow him and chat about his farming life. I’m not sure if I picked up more from getting my hands dirty during lambing or from talking to Tim and Chase about modern farming issues. They were also really helpful, if a little frightening, when it came to ideas for killing someone on a farm and disposing of a body!
When I started my research, I came across a phenomenal woman called Emma Gray, a shepherdess who’d taken on her first farm at the age of 23, miles away from anywhere. I was so impressed by her grit, determination and sheer gumption when it came to her farm and her animals that I wanted to channel some of that into my main character – Jude Gray was born! Although in the books, Jude leaves the dog handling to her shepherd as she came late to farming and it would not have done the talented and highly experienced shepherdesses out there justice if Jude waltzed in and nailed it after just a short time.