Women’s literature – Samantha Henthorn Finds The Right Words

Interview for My Half-Sister’s Half-Sister (novel) @RossendaleRadio 19th January 2022

Samantha Henthorn and Lindsay McKinnon give an interview on Rossendale Radio about ‘My Half-Sister’s Half-Sister’.

It was a cold and frosty evening when Lindsay McKinnon and I ventured north to Rossendale for an interview at the fabulous radio station Rossendale Radio (104.7 FM ). Fortunately for us, we were chauffeured to the studio by a handsome and charming man – that’s why I married him, Mr Henthorn has a good sense of direction.

Lindsay McKinnon (voice-over actor) and Samantha Henthorn (author)

We were invited to talk about my psychological fiction ‘My Half-Sister’s Half-Sister’ with Marie Baistow who hosts a weekly show called ‘Mental Health Matters‘. The novel explores the emotional well being of the protagonist, Epiphany (Pippa for short), a forty-year-old woman who has held an unhelpful belief system for the past twenty years. She has suffered in silence with depression and has made little progress with her life. As the novel unfolds, readers learn how a strange visit by her half-sister’s half-sister, Sadie, changed her life.

Rossendale Radio presenter Marie Baistow works as an Occupational Therapist for the NHS and at the start of the pandemic began presenting the weekly show which offers a much needed voice for anyone in the Rossendale Valley who is thinking of improving their mental and emotional well being.

My novel My Half-Sister’s Half-Sister opens with Pippa’s memory of a school swim class when she was around seven years old. There she meets Sadie, her half-sister’s half-sister. Sadie is confident, care free, and immediately becomes Pippa’s hero.

This girl never seems bothered that she can’t swim. I think she is a year older than me and from a different school. Different, except we all get banded together. The different ones, the ones who can’t swim.

Lindsay treated us to a reading of this prologue, it will make you cry and laugh at the same time because it is the moment that epitomises Pippa’s belief system – she wants to be someone else.

Unfortunately, a playback of last night’s interview is not available currently. The audiobook of My Half-Sister’s Half-Sister is due to be released this spring.

We spoke about the use of language in the novel. As a former RMN, I was able to confidently use phrases associated with mental illness in a favourable way for the protagonist. I feel that this discourse is useful to promote understanding and makes Pippa relatable.

We spoke about the novel’s ending – the twist (Pippa is an unreliable narrator so this plot thread is essential). I won’t give away the ending here, only to say that your half-sister’s half-sister could be you. Sadie is everything Pippa wants to be so is able to persuade Pippa that her mother and sister are witches.

Lindsay gave another reading of Pippa’s experience as an inpatient of an acute psychiatric unit, she trusted in one health professional (a psychologist called Dr Schofield) who helped her to come to terms with her heavy drinking and completed a recovery – sort of. The final chapter of My Half-Sister’s Half-Sister is bitter sweet because although Pippa is well enough to live a happy and safe life with her boyfriend, Ben, she continues to lack insight into her magical thinking. OR DOES SHE? I intentionally created an open ended narrative – what she believes about her mother and sister could be true. They could be witches, and as this would feed into Pippa’s ruminations about being left out of the family circle it puts her at risk of possible relapse.

If you are interested in My Half-Sister’s Half-Sister click HERE

If you are interested in joining my mailing list to find out the moment the audiobook is released click HERE

If you are interested in Rossendale Radio click HERE

Lindsay McKinnon I believe is available for voice-over work (provided she is not narrating one of my books 🙂 ) Lindsay’s website is HERE

Happy reading everyone, and positive vibes for your emotional well being, Samantha

On How I Wrote My Half-Sister’s Half-Sister

Inspiration attacked Samantha Henthorn from several different angles when she wrote her new novel, ‘My Half-Sister’s Half-Sister.

Inspiration attacked me from several different angles when I wrote my new novel, ‘My Half-Sister’s Half-Sister’.

A while ago, everywhere I looked there was a book title that included the word ‘sister’. The Stepsister by Jenny O’Brien, My Sister, the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite, Dead Sis by Jane Holland, and The Herb Sisters by Marina Johnson to name just four; sisters were everywhere in literature (I blame the Brontes).

Even though I knew that by the time I had written my ‘sister book’ publishing trends would have progressed, but I couldn’t get ‘sister’ out of my head.

Siblings never go out of fashion.

One of my favourite books (and my own sister’s teasing stick) was My Naughty Little Sister by Dorothy Edwards (illustrated by Shirley Hughes).

‘Sisters’ are not the only trope that has been swirling around my writing for years. I’ve been obsessed with witches since I was little. If you’ve read my blog before you will have seen how I was named after the protagonist from 1960s sitcom Bewitched, you will have seen how I read books such as Witchdust by Mary Welfare and The Worst Witch by Jill Murphy and met and was baptised a witch at age 6 on a family day out to Pendle.

(Or was I?)

Pippa, the protagonist of My Half-Sister’s Half-Sister is not a witch, she is a forty-year-old woman trying to make sense of her life. When Sadie visits (her sister’s half-sister), Pippa starts to think that her mother and sister Heather are witches. All the evidence is there; Heather is a green goddess and Jacquetta (Pippa’s mother) is obsessed with the patron saint of keys. You would have to read on to find out the details – I want readers to either believe in Pippa’s breakdown or that her family are actually a nest of vipers.

If you’ve ever read or seen Fight Club or read Season of Migration to the North by Tayeb Salih you’ll be well versed with books that leave you not knowing what to believe. Plus, we have all lived through some uncertain times recently, so I think mind-bending is on its way in literature.

There is a debate going on (I’ve heard it in pubs, I’ve read it in reviews and I’ve tormented my own thoughts) about lockdown in literature. If you saw the Channel 4 drama Help earlier this year then you’ll know that this kind of pandemic narrative must be highlighted in any genre it can be. I am of the opinion that literature has a job; if stories are about people then people should be about stories. We are all wondering if the pandemic has taught us anything, and we should be reading books to help process the volume of information, emotions, bereavement, culture shocks and psychic storm-trooping we’ve all been through.

I’m not saying My Half-Sister’s Half-Sister is the answer to any and all pandemic woes; what I am saying is it HAD to be set at the end of the lockdown… it just had to be. Pippa needed to have an epiphany.

When writing My Half-Sister’s Half-Sister, I had to come up with an occupation for Pippa. I had also been reading and rereading Good Morning Midnight by Jean Rhys (for my creative writing degree). I really wanted to include an intertextual reference, and before I knew it, Rhys’s Mr Blank became Pippa’s Mr Bland; and Pippa became an accountant ‘doing sums’ (Sadie’s words).

Actually, my darling daughter is an accountant. We text each other every day and have our own little ‘text speak’ language. A while ago, I started asking her if she had ‘done any really hard sums’ at work… obviously I was teasing (that’s just our sense of humour) but it stuck. I asked my daughter, and she didn’t mind if that Pippa also ‘does sums’ at work (creative licence applied – I know that accountancy is a complicated occupation).

I used to be a psychiatric nurse until it was made impossible for me to continue working (my RMN career ended after I was diagnosed with MS). Reading and writing saved my mental health when faced with the vast culture shock of retiring at 39. That was almost eight years ago, and I’ve come a long way since. The older I get, the easier it becomes to face up to the serious side of life (especially when you write). It all fitted into place, and the protagonist of My Half-Sister’s Half-Sister started to shape into a character who could inspire hope (or at least seek help).

Because Pippa loves reading, I had to make literature part of the narrative. I achieved this with plenty of intertextual references, starting with the nursery rhyme ‘Here we go Round the Mulberry Bush’ (said to be written by female inmates of HMP Wakefield in the 19th century), and fitting because Pippa is stuck going round in circles with her female relatives.

Pippa compares herself to two of Hardy’s protagonists, the forsaken Tess Durbeyfield and the confident heroine Bathsheba Everdene. In the story, this reflected Pippa’s journey.

During writing, I was concerned about overdoing the references to other texts, then I remembered reading and loving the modern classic ‘Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit’ by Jeanette Winterson. There is almost an intertextual reference on every page, and Jeanette Winterson is a genius.

Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit (Paperback)

By this stage of writing My Half-Sister’s Half-Sister, Pippa had taken over and told me what to write (see my other posts about my writing being powered by witchcraft).

If I really dig deep, this book started with a memory. When I was a child (about four or five), I remember going to visit two ‘aunties’ who lived in a marvellous house with a big bay window on a road that my dad had called ‘Millionaire’s Row’. These two women were extremely glamourous, with mauve and grey-toned clothes and knee-high boots. I don’t remember their names. ANYWAY, years later I asked my mum who these two women were; she had no idea. Maybe I dreamt them, or maybe they were Jacquetta and Heather – two of the main characters in My Half-Sister’s Half-Sister.

Pippa has a secret, will you believe what she has to say?

I do have an older sister, and no the book is DEFINATELY NOT about her. However, this is why I chose the hyphenated way of writing half-sister for the title – there are actually five ways to write the title My Half-Sister’s Half-Sister:

My half-sister’s half-sister My Half Sister’s Half Sister
My Half-sister’s Half-sister My half sister’s half sister
My Half-Sister’s Half-Sister

(thank you https://www.alisonproofreader.com/)

I recently had a conversation with my sister-in-law about enjoying books with a quirky and different plot (like mine) so I dedicated the book to her.

Deeper inspirations flow through My Half-Sister’s Half-Sister that I can’t reveal because that would be a spoiler!

Thank you for reading my blog today, My Half-Sister’s Half-Sister is available to pre-order from Amazon now (release date 30/11/21). See my Facebook Author page for #BlackFridayDeals. Audiobook in production.

Happy reading, Samantha 🙂

PS I also wrote these:

What’s in a (Character) Name? Sharon Booth @Sharon_Booth1 #Guestpost #Uplifting Women’s Fiction #IARTG

Sharon Booth tells Samantha Henthorn how she chooses her character names.

Way back when I started reaching out and networking as an independent author, I saw a post on a reputable social media group asking if any authors wanted to appear on a blog called ‘Five Photos’. Before responding, I thought wow, this author writes uplifting women’s fiction. That sounds right up my street!

This author was none other than super talented SHARON BOOTH I have read every single one of her books – the first one being Kearton Bay my husband came home from work and saw me reading in the garden. ‘Why are you crying?’ he said. ‘Because this book is so touching… and SO cute!’

Thank you so much Sharon for joining me!

What’s in a Character Name?

Names are very important to me. I can’t just pick a character’s name out of thin air; I have to search for just the right one. First of all, it has to suit the character, obviously, but it also has to mean something to me or to the story.

With the first series of books I wrote it was easy. I’d spent a few years researching my family tree and I wanted to pay tribute to those people I’d been learning about, and who’d come to mean so much to me. The surnames of most of the characters in Kearton Bay are the surnames of my ancestors: Hollingsworth, Bone, Boden and Kean (hyphenated as one name for the story), MacLean, Crook, Hope … even Kearton Bay itself was named after my paternal grandmother, whose maiden name was Kearton. Rhiannon, who has Wiccan beliefs, is named after a Celtic goddess. In mythology, her son was Pryderi, so I named her son in the book Derry. Rose’s name was a given. She’s crazy about the colour pink, so she and her daughters all had to have pink names. Her daughters are called Fuchsia and Cerise. Gabriel Bailey, on the other hand, got his first name because I needed an angel’s name for the story to work. His surname was inspired by my favourite film, It’s a Wonderful Life. George Bailey is a real hero to me, and I couldn’t think of anyone I’d rather name my own hero after.

With the Skimmerdale books, it was the place names that took some working out. I wanted to be as authentic as possible, and spent ages looking at old Norse words, as so many places in the Yorkshire Dales have old Norse names. Skimmerdale itself is explained in This Other Eden. “Skimmer” was an old Norse word meaning “to shine brightly, to sparkle”. I had the image in my mind of sunlight glinting on the river as a Viking chief looked down upon it, inspiring him to give the area that name. The farm’s name, Fleetsthorpe, is derived from Fleets, meaning “stream or beck”, and Thorpe, meaning “the outlying farmstead”.

Bramblewick was a tribute to the novels of Leo Walmsley, who called his fictional version of Robin Hood’s Bay by that name. I borrowed it for a brief mention in A Kiss from a Rose, little realising that I would be revisiting the village and naming an entire series of books after it!

With my Moorland Heroes series, Saving Mr Scrooge made every use of the Charles Dickens’ classic on which it was loosely based. Jacob Marley became Marley Jacobs, and instead of Ebenezer Scrooge (which wouldn’t have sat well with modern readers) I named the hero Christopher Carroll, as Chris Carroll was the closest I could get to the original title. He was nicknamed Kit to be a bit more up-to-date – and because I was going through a Game of Thrones period at the time!

With Resisting Mr Rochester, the surname of the hero was fixed in stone, but I had fun playing around with the other important names. His first name became Ethan, which means strong and safe. Cara Truelove was inspired by two things: Cara means dear one, beloved (aw!) and seemed appropriate. Most people assume Truelove was just to emphasise how romantic she was, but in fact, it’s taken from an old legend connected with the surname Eyre. It tells how a companion of William the Conqueror, named Truelove, saved the life of the king, and was renamed Eyre in gratitude for giving William the air that he breathed. There’s no real historical evidence for this but it’s a lovely legend, and as I was looking for a connection to Jane Eyre I thought it was perfect. You can read more about it here. Although the book is obviously a tribute to the Charlotte Bronte novel, it was also inspired by Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey. Cara does share some characteristics with Catherine Morland in that novel, so I named Ethan Rochester’s home Moreland Hall in tribute.

For my current series, The Witches of Castle Clair, I did a lot of research into names with magical or mythical connections. The river was an important part of the town and its mythology, and the word Hrafn is old Norse for raven, so very appropriate for my stories. I found lots of names connected with the sky in some way for my St Clair family: Sirius, Star, Celeste, Sky, Iliana (ray of light), Raiden (god of thunder and lightning), Zephyr (west wind) and Aurora all have celestial meanings.

It does take time to research names, but I always feel more comfortable when I know I’ve chosen appropriate ones that fit the characters. I like to have them all in place before I start writing the book. There’s nothing worse than getting halfway through and realising I don’t like the name, or it doesn’t fit, and having to change it. It’s worth making the effort right at the beginning. After all, these people are going to be my best friends for several months. The least I can do is get their names right!

Author Bio

Sharon Booth is a member of the Romantic Novelists’ Association, and an Authorpreneur member of The Alliance of Independent Authors. She writes uplifting women’s fiction – “love, laughter, and happy ever after”. Although a happy ending for her main characters is guaranteed, she makes them work for it!

Sharon grew up in the East Yorkshire town of Hessle, and now lives in Kingston-upon-Hull with her husband and their gentle, and thoroughly gorgeous, German Shepherd dog.

Since giving up her admin job at a medical practice, she spends a lot of time assuring her family of five children, assorted in-laws and hordes of grandchildren – not to mention a sceptical mother and a contrary hairdresser – that writing full-time is a proper job and she hasn’t taken early retirement.

She has a love/hate relationship with sugar (she loves it, it hates her), adores Doctor Who and Cary Grant movies, and admits to being shamefully prone to all-consuming crushes on fictional heroes.

Find out more about Sharon at linktr.ee/sharonboothwriter

Sharon’s latest novel, To Catch a Witch, is the third in the romcom series The Witches of Castle Clair. It will be published on April 28^th and is available for pre-order here.

To Catch a Witch

Return to Castle Clair for the final chapter of the St Clair story.
It’s three hundred and fifty years since the famous witch’s leap happened in the North Yorkshire town. Riverside Walk is swarming with eager tourists, wanting to pay tribute to the legendary Blaise St Clair. It’s also Christmas Eve, and the family has gathered to celebrate an eventful year, and to look forward to even better times ahead.
But a shock event changes everything, bringing a whole lot of trouble to the door of Castle Lodge.
For something big is happening in Castle Clair. Strangers are arriving, a prophecy is unfolding, a mystery is deepening, a reckoning is coming … and someone’s getting rather too fond of Mrs Greenwood’s baking.
The past is colliding with the present, and the future is in jeopardy. No wonder the High Council of Witches is a bit miffed.
Will the St Clairs have enough strength, courage ~ and chocolate fudge cake ~ to see them through?

Or is this the end of the world as they know it?

Thank you so much Sharon! I cannot wait for To Catch A Witch to be published!

Join me next time, happy reading, Samantha xx

What’s in a (Character) Name? #Guestpost #Reblog @DeborahMiles7 #IARTG #Indieauthor #Readingthrillers #AgainsttheFlowPress

Got to share this again, Deborah J Miles’ book Orchard View still sends the literary shivers when I think about the character Etta Franklin’s story… I am not so secretly hoping that Deborah writes another book, but I know that a lot of her time is taken up with her fantastic blog Against the Flow Press. Deborah is a supporter of indie authors like me and has just worked super hard on the #DecTheShelves promotion that took over Twitter during the Christmas run-up.

Orchard View also made it on to my Christmas gift list this year – Father-in-Law is a big reader.

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I will shut up now and let Deborah J. Miles tell you about her character names:

I ‘accidently’ wrote my novel while I was taking an online writing course through FutureLearn. A friend and I were doing the course together, really for something to occupy us while she was recovering from surgery. During one of the exercises in the course, the whole story just came to me. I kept it in my head and typed out chapter after chapter.

Bill Maynard was my first character. The name just seemed right for the character. I needed something short and to the point as a first name, hence ‘Bill’, and somehow ‘Maynard’ followed. It occurred to me after I’d finished writing that ‘Maynard’ is a surname which appears on my family tree, and ‘Bill Maynard’ was also the name of an actor.

My second character was the house itself, Orchard View. House names often refer to their location or history, such as Sea View, Hilltop, The Old Rectory, and The Old School House. The house was so named because it once overlooked an orchard.

My next character, Etta Franklin, was created by borrowing the name of a lovely lady I knew as a child. I loved the sound of the name ‘Etta’ which I realised must have been the shortened form of Henrietta. Etta needed to have standing, so ‘Henrietta’ was a suitable name, but she also needed to be likeable, and ‘Etta’, to my mind, is a much friendlier name. I used the phone book to choose her surname. I opened it at random, and pointed to a line on the open page, which as it turned out, contained the surname ‘Franklin’.

Norma Parker is the street busybody or Nosy Parker. I thought it apt that she should be called ‘Parker’. Her first name, ‘Norma’, was the name of an acquaintance from many moons ago who had some of the attributes I wanted for my character. Her nosy ways have her labelled as the ‘Neighbourhood Witch’.

As the story developed, and I added new characters, I found that if I could imagine the character, their size, stature, traits and personality, then a name would occur to me. I suppose I am drawing on memories I have tucked away about people I have known in one capacity or another, such as from family history research, celebrities, friends etc… There was only one I changed; Maeve became Mae because I felt Maeve didn’t convey the softness I was looking for in this character. Mae seems to be a favourite with my readers too.

https://www.futurelearn.com

Deborah J Miles
Deborah Miles is married with three grown-up children and lives in Kent.

She has worked in banking, tourism, education and social services, and has hosted international students for over 30 years.

Her interests include: genealogy, self-improvement, home computing, web design, D.I.Y/gardening, pen friends and writing.

Deborah is independently published and created the imprint Against the Flow Press for her first novel, Orchard View.

Blog: http://againsttheflowpress.blogspot.co.uk/

Twitter @DeborahMiles7,

blog: https://againsttheflowpress.blogspot.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/deborah_j_miles/

Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.co.uk/

Think I put Deborah’s blog on twice… make sure you don’t miss it!

Links to buy Orchard View :

Amazon UK

Amazon US

Well, that was awesome, big thanks to Deborah J Miles for guesting on my last post of 2019. It’s been a blast!

Onwards!

See you next time, when William B. Taylor and Helen Gerrard tell us about their illustrated children’s book The Bee Polisher.

Happy New Year, reading, writing, and everything love Samantha xx

What’s in a Character Name? #GuestPost Jessica Redland

Jessica Redland talks about character naming and her bestselling novel ‘The Secret to Happiness’

This time last month, I promised to bring news about novels I had read as part of my creative writing degree. However, I am unable to share my thoughts with you until they have been marked by my tutor – don’t want to be giving my best stuff away – it’s getting serious. As an alternative, I thought, I’ll write about a beautiful book I’ve read recently. The Secret to Happiness by Jessica Redland – then shut the front door! Jessica Redland herself, one of my favourite authors only goes and volunteers to guest post!

Over to Jessica;

I believe that the genre you write very much influences the choice of character names. An author of sci-fi or fantasy stories is very likely to pick unusual, quirky names or, more likely, make them up themselves. An author of historical novels is going to need to do their research and draw on names from that particular era. As an author of contemporary women’s fiction, I’m very much about contemporary names and I confess right here and now that mine don’t tend to be particularly quirky or unusual. But, I do have an approach to creating my character names which I thought I’d share.

FAMILY

The first names of all of my immediate family members (on my side of the family rather than my husband’s) have now appeared in one of my novels, and some surnames have been used too,although never together.

This didn’t start off intentionally. I first had the idea for my debut novel, Searching for Steven, in 2002 and started writing it the following year. I wanted a protagonist who had a very ‘normal’ name and came up with Sarah Peterson. As the story developed, I realised I had a trilogy on my hands, each subsequent part focusing on one of Sarah’s two best friends: Elise Dawson and Clare O’Connell.

In 2004, my younger brother started seeing someone called Clare (now his wife) and, in 2005, my older brother’s first-born was named Sarah. Suddenly there were two new family members named after two of my protagonists. At the time, I toyed with changing Sarah and Clare because the books weren’t finished and were nowhere near ready to be sent out to publishers, but I’d lived with those names for so long that it didn’t feel right to change them. Instead, a trend started.

My parents, Peter and Joyce, make a cameo appearance as regular customers in Christmas at The Chocolate Pot Café. My daughter is called Ashleigh Brooke and I have created an chocolatier apprentice in Charlee and the Chocolate Shop called Ashleigh Brooks. Two of my nieces, Lucy and Erin, also appear in that book as one of the main character’s nieces and my other niece, Lana, helps out in the cupcake shop in Christmas at Carly’s Cupcakes.

The characters are not based on any family members in appearance or personality – it’s just their names – although I do confess that the couple with my parents’ names are very similar in age and personality.

VILLAINS

The baddies in my books are usually horrible exes or partners who deserve to become exes and they’re generally just names plucked out of thin air although I am careful not to use names of anyone I know to avoid any offence because I’d already learned my lesson on this. Before I started my trend of using family names, I was a bit mortified to realise that I’d used my cousin’s name – Alan – in Searching for Steven for Sarah’s uncle who was a grumpy old man and died all alone, lying undiscovered for several days. When Alan’s daughters and wife read the book, they thankfully found this hilarious and ribbed my cousin for ages about it! More caution was needed after that!

One of my favourite moments was naming a character after a former horrible boss. I’ve had some very nasty bosses in my time but the worst one was when I was in my mid-thirties. He frequently made me cry, overlooked me for promotion, took my dream job away from me in a restructure and left me hanging for six days with no idea whether I still had a job or not. So when I needed to create a character in Bear With Me who got sacked after some customer complaints and I was looking for a character name, I didn’t have to look far, heehee! I have a sign on my office wall that states “Careful, or you’ll end up in my novel”. So very true!

MIXING IT UP

For each book, I try to pick names that don’t sound similar, aren’t the same length, and don’t begin with the same letter. For example, in the series, the protagonists are Sarah, Elise and Clare so very different names. In my latest novel, The Secret to Happiness, I have Alison, Karen and Danniella; also very different. I did get myself in a pickle with Danniella, though, as I kept switching the spelling of it without realising.

This plan doesn’t always work, though. In Bear With Me, I named the two main males as Scott and Sam, with the brother of the main female character being called Sean. I had a last-minute panic about having 3 x 1-syllable names beginning with S so I changed Sean to Max. It didn’t feel right and, just before the book was uploaded to Amazon, I changed my mind again and got my husband to do a find and replace, returning it to Sean. A friend messaged me to say she’d started reading Bear With Me and had come across a really weird word in the book: cliSean. What? Then I realised what had happened. Hubby hadn’t done a find and replace on whole word only so it had changed every word that contained the letters ‘max’. ‘CliSean’ was meant to be ‘climax’. Oops! You’d think I’d have learned from experience on this as I’d done it once before. In the series, I had doubts that Clare was an Irish enough name and changed her to Siobhan but it didn’t feel right so I changed it back and found the word ‘deSiobhan’ in my MS instead of ‘declare’. Muppet!

SOURCES OF INSPIRATION

A huge baby name dictionary I bought before my daughter was born is invaluable for first name ideas. I also have a print-off of the 100 most common surnames in England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales from which I frequently draw inspiration. I regularly Google most popular baby names in a certain year or in a certain country too. And if I’m looking for names for children, I get Ashleigh to name everyone in her class at school to see if any names feel right.

ANIMALS

Most of my books have animals in them somewhere. This can be a pet owned by a character or just a mention of an animal. Naming animals is great fun. My favourites are a giant house rabbit called Hercules in Christmas at The Chocolate Pot Café. I’d like to claim a stroke of genius there but it was hubby’s suggestion. Hercules’s predecessors are called Titch and Dinks. I also have cats called Kit and Kat, and dogs called Hobnob and Twix. Nom nom!

KEEPING TRACK

It’s a bit geeky but I have an enormous spreadsheet containing tabs for people, businesses, places, street names, animals etc. All my books are set in and around the same place: the fictional North Yorkshire seaside town of Whitsborough Bay. If I didn’t keep track of the place names and businesses, I’d get lost. If I didn’t keep a track of the names I use, I’d discover that pretty much every minor male character is called Bob, which seems to be my go-to name.

I’m conscious I’ve written an essay so better not talk about book titles too! Thank you so much, Sam, for having me as a guest on your blog. Good luck with your studies.

Jessica xx

Jessica lives on the stunning North Yorkshire Coast in England – the inspiration for the settings in her books – with her husband, daughter, cat, Sprocker Spaniel puppy, and an ever-growing collection of collectible teddy bears. Although if the puppy has her way, the collection will be reduced to a pile of stuffing and chewed limbs!

She’s an HR Tutor on a freelance basis and tries, often successfully, to fit writing around that.

Jessica is published by Boldwood Books and her most recent release, The Secret to Happiness, came out in September 2019. Her next few books will be re-vamped re-issues of her Welcome to Whitsborough Bay series, starting with Making Wishes at Bay View in January 2020, a full-length novel combining the novella Raving About Rhys with its sequel,Callie’s Christmas Wish.

Amazon UK https://www.amazon.co.uk/Jessica-Redland/e/B00PO9I1Y4

Amazon US https://www.amazon.com/Jessica-Redland/e/B00PO9I1Y4

Goodreads

https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/12576082.Jessica_Redland

Facebook https://www.facebook.com/JessicaRedlandWriter/

Blog https://jessicaredlandwriter.wordpress.com

Website https://www.jessicaredland.com

Twitter @JessicaRedland

Instagram https://www.instagram.com/jessicaredlandwriter/

Pinterest https://www.pinterest.co.uk/jessicaredland/

The sign: