Blog

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...

Jude Gray Jude grew up in a small, terraced house with her mother in Malvern. Whilst studying for a degree in primary teaching she met fellow student Ben who introduced her to Adam Gray - a sheep farmer from the other side of the Malvern Hills who stole Jude’s heart....

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...

In Sunny Days at the Sweet Shop of Second Chances, Holly Berry is going away to the south of France for her best friends’ joint hen and stag do. While there’s no doubt that she wants to be there to support them and have some well-earned relaxation time, there is one...

The most famous Regency dog was Lord Byron’s beloved Newfoundland ‘Boatswain’ (see Clifton Tomson’s portrait, commissioned by the poet). Poetry and dogs were his constant passions. When Boatswain died of rabies he was buried at Newstead Abbey, Byron’s ancestral home,...

A Magical Research Trip To Iceland Iceland has long been on my bucket list of places to visit, so it made complete sense to set one of my novels there, until I realised it would be hard to do it justice without visiting first...So, in November 2021 when COVID seemed...

September 1915 and the country is in the second year of a war. Hannah Merrill helps run her Aunt Violet’s bookshop in Covent Garden and one morning, rumours of an air raid the night before make her worry for the state of the bookshop. She finds the building unharmed,...

The Widows’ Wine Club ‘I don’t want to be a dried-up old widow woman!’ I remember sobbing in my husband’s arms. ‘You won’t be, my darling.’  Peter was certain there had been ‘a god-awful cock-up’ – to quote  – and we would hear in the morning that the consultant had...