Christmas Wishes, Mistletoe Kisses - Settings 2

I know it’s been a while since I posted and this book has been out for a couple of months now, but I couldn’t not write about these settings in Christmas Wishes, Mistletoe Kisses. Blame flu, Christmas chaos, book deadlines and family crises. But better late than never...

Across the river from Louise’s house is the little village of Lower Hadwell. Those of you who have read Her Parenthood Assignment will recognise it as the same hamlet in which Luke and Gaby live. They even get a quick mention in Christmas Wishes, Mistletoe Kisses – but if you blink, you’ll miss it.

Dittisham from Greenway Quay

Lower Hadwell is based on the real village of Dittisham on the River Dart in Devon. It’s a beautiful, chocolate-box kind of place with cottages painted in pastel colours and the steepest hill ever. Louise and her son, Jack, walk backwards up the hill to try and stop their calves from screaming. Been there, done that, felt the lactic acid building up in my muscles…

The other key location in this book is Louise’s boathouse. I had no idea when I sailed past it hundreds of times during my teenage years that it belonged to the mysterious white mansion up on the hill (see previous post). The boathouse always looked so idyllic, with its arched windows and balcony – just the place to spend a lazy summer’s afternoon.

A view of the boathouse taken from the river

In reality, it’s a pretty sparse place inside, with only a tiled fireplace and some old cane furniture, but in the book I embellished. The fireplace was still there, but Louise chose this as her bolthole, her hiding place, when life wasn’t going as planned, and renovated it to make it a little more comfortable. Think New England creams, pale blues and deep reds, a roaring fire and a wrought iron daybed covered with a quilt and you’ll be pretty much there.

The inside of Greenway boathouse, which once belonged to a certain Mrs Mallowan - better known as writer, Agatha Christie.

This is the place where Louise goes to lick her wounds when she has to spend her first Christmas without her son – and the place where her Christmas Wishes start coming true. Ben realises how miserable she is and decides to cheer her up by bringing Christmas to her solitary pity party – whether she likes it or not! And this is the place where Louise and Ben’s romance both starts and ends – in terms of the book, anyway. I like to think the romance keeps going even when there are no more words left on the page…

A sign on the boathouse jetty that inspired Louise's loathing of tresspassers.


The view from the boathouse balcony

Christmas Wishes, Mistletoe Kisses - Settings 1

My father loves sailing and when I was about 12 he bought a boat and moored it on the River Dart in Devon. Many weekends and holidays were then spent on the yacht. I can’t say I always appreciated the wet weather, anything above a force 5 wave, or some of the chores, but hey, I was a teenager, it was my job to whine about these things.

I did, however, love the scenery, the feeling of freedom that comes from sailing and getting to see things you never normally see from the road. Up the Dart, just above Greenway quay was one of these places. Just through the trees, you can see a lonely white mansion – just a glimpse, before the boat motored on and it disappeared from view. I always used to look out for the house, every time we came back to the mooring from a sailing trip, and wonder who owned the house and what it would be like to live there.

Years later I discovered the house was called Greenway and had belonged to Agatha Christie. That just made me even more intrigued. Then, a couple of years ago, I learned the National Trust had acquired the house and that the public could go and view the gardens. Next time we visited Devon, I was there like a shot, camera in hand. I knew I wanted to use this mysterious white house as a setting in a book – I just didn’t know which one yet.

The house was old and crumbling, when I visited in May 2007, although there are plans afoot to renovate the house and provide holiday accommodation in some of the upper floors! So I had to guess what it might be like inside and take some of my inspiration from the surroundings.

This was the perfect place for my WAG heroine, Louise, to come and hide out from the world when she’d finally ditched her cheating husband. The loneliness, the beauty, all seemed to match her mood. I knew at once that she would love to live there and I based her fictional home of Whitehaven on Greenway, although I did take a little license here and there. Not only is the house stunning, but the gardens and views across the river are wonderful too. Here are just a few of my favourites:

The hilly woods of 'Whitehaven'

The greenhouse where Louise and Ben first meet.

Inside the greenhouse.

View from Greenway looking towards Dartmouth & Kingswear

Behind the Scenes: Saying Yes To The Millionaire - Chp 4

Fern and Josh’s first clue is this:

Make your way to Berwick Street market. There you will find ten stalls with the Secret London logo on them. Two teams may work on each stall. Your team must sell £30 worth of fruit and veg in order to receive your next clue.




Berwick Street is a crowded little road lined with fabric shops, many selling material for saris. Incense wafts out of the fabric shops and mixes with the smells of fresh produce on the market stalls that line the pavement. I seriously wouldn’t consider buying electrical goods from some of the ‘geezers’ manning the stalls. Ever seen the comedy show ‘Only Fools And Horses’? Nuff said.



Next stop is Speakers’ Corner, an area at the edge of Hyde Park. On a Sunday, people can exercise their right to free speech here. Some of the 'speakers' make sense, some are out and out nutcases. It’s normally empty on weekdays (see photo), but for the purpose of the book, I invented an extra session complete with a baying crowd drawn by the radio coverage of the contest.




The following clue is a little more complicated and Fern and Josh find themselves back in Trafalgar Square and start hunting for a Turner painting – The Hay Wain:

It's housed in the National Gallery. I actually spent a day navigating Fern and Josh's route and working out which rooms they would end up in following their clues. The area of gallery that is closed in the book was really blocked off on the day I visited. Things are going fairly well until Fern starts to find her stride in the race and realises that they’re not only barking up the wrong tree, but in the wrong gallery looking for the wrong painting. Josh is so impressed, he plants a kiss on her, and that’s where things start to get complicated!

Next stop is another gallery – the Tate Britain. Fern and Josh discover they painting they are actually looking for is this one:

Which leads them to another paining, one of my absolute favourites – Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose by John Singer Sargent. I swear, when you stand in front of it, those paper lanterns really seem to glow. And I could stare at the frill details on the girls' dresses for hours...

Behind the scenes: Saying Yes To The Millionaire, Chp 3

The starting point for the Secret London treasure hunt that Fern and Josh take part in is Trafalgar Square.

The National Gallery (more about that later!) flanks the whole of the north side of the square and you can see down Whitehall to the Houses of Parliament if you stand with your back to the gallery. (See if you can spot 'Big Ben' in the photo above. The name Big Ben actually refers to the bell inside the tower, rather than the tower itself, but who's splitting hairs?).

Nelson’s Column towers over the square, with grand stone lions flanking the base of this famous general's monument. It’s a popular place for outdoor meetings and rallies and I thought it would be a great location to start and finish the race. In fact, if you look in the photo below, there are railings and a stall set up right where I'd pictured the race starting.

Here’s the entrance to the tube station on Trafalgar Square, connected to Charing Cross by a long underground tunnel. Unfortunately, Fern’s brain has short-circuited and she’s forgotten that their next destination is in the opposite direction…

Behind the scenes: Saying Yes To The Millionaire, Chapters 1 & 2

Right! The current book is IN! So, as promised, here is some of the background to Fern and Josh's story, Saying Yes To The Millionaire.


First of all, let me introdice you to my hero and heroine. Fern Chambers is a risk analyst, who is happy with the fact that the most daring thing she does on a regular basis is try a new flavoured syrup in her decaff latte. But her best friend challenges her to say 'yes' to every question she is asked for a week, and because her friend is promising money to her favourite charity, Fern accepts.


Enter Josh Adams, the boy next door. Or he was the boy next door, now he's the successful owner of a travel company and he's back in town for a bit. What a pity Fern discovers the teenage crush she used to have for him doesn't seem to have worn off. Josh is a daredevil, a wanderer, and he's looking for some excitement before he dashes off to some far-flung place. He discovers that there's a charity treasure hunt going on in London that weekend and decides that Fern is the perfect partner. Poor old Fern has no option but to say YES!


They first meet again when Fern is doing a bungee jump near the banks of the Thames. If you want to read about their first meeting click here and you can read the short excerpt on my website. There used to be a large crane set up near Battersea Park that was used for bungee jumps. It's not there anymore, but I invented a site somewhere near the Thames Embankment. There's always something being demolished or built somewhere in London and my imaginary crane was set up on a brown-field site awaiting development.


After the jump, Fern and Josh take a walk along the Thames Embankment, which runs along the river from Battersea Bridge to Blackfriars Bridge. It was built in the 1860s on the foreshore of the Thames to provide a road and walkway on the surface and room for a new sewage system and underground lines underneath. The views walking along here are some of the prettiest in London and I am totally in love with the large black lampposts with grotesque round-headed Victorian fish wound round them.

If you look carefully on the front cover of the book, you can see that the artist has used this setting. Looking at Fern and Josh on the cover, they're a pretty good match for the people I pictured in my head too!


I have another reason for liking the Embankment, a much more personal one. It was sitting on a bench there, many moons ago on a chilly October evening, that my husband proposed to me, and I still think it's one of the most romantic places in the world!

English Lord, Ordninary Lady - settings, part two

While Penshurst Place was the inspiration fro Elmhurst Hall, the idea for the attics full of undiscovered treasure came from another wonderful house. In English Lord, Ordinary Lady, Josie’s godfather has spent his life travelling and collecting strange and unusual things. I got the idea for this wonderful array of artefacts after a visit to Snowshill Manor in Gloucestershire.

The owner of the old manor house was Charles Paget Wade, an architect, artist and poet, born in 1883. He bought Snowshill Manor when it was derelict and restored it to house a collection of assorted objects from all over the globe while he lived in a tiny cottage next door. He inherited a fortune from his family’s sugar company which meant he no longer needed to work, and was truly one of the great British eccentrics.

Unfortunately, I only have a few pictures of Charles Wade's living quarters because visitors are not allowed to take pictures inside the house, but they give you a feel for what the interior of the manor house is like. Photographs I have found of Snowshill on the internet are owned by the National Trust and can be found in their libray here.

It was craftsmanship, not value, that was Wade’s passion for collecting things, and the manor house at Snowshill contains model boats, musical instruments, Chinese and Japanese furniture, armour, toys, dolls’ houses, bicycles, prams, and a hundred things more, all displayed throughout a rambling old house.

What I do have is some pictures of the outside of the manor and some of the strange things Wade hid in his garden…

Gardens of Delight

The family and I had a day out in Kew Gardens on Sunday. I'm desperate to set a book there but, as yet, the right characters and the right situation have not popped into my brain. Watch this space...

Anyway, there are some wonderfully romantic locations within the boundaries of the gardens. The fantastic Victorian glasshouses are probably one of the first things someone thinks of if they know anything about Kew Gardens. The Palm House is full of exotic plants and little sprinklers mist the air to keep it hot and humid. Could be a good location for a romantic clinch! Things might get hot and steamy in a completely different manner...

I have a couple of favourite spots around the gardens. I've been waiting for two years to see the wisteria that winds around a large iron gazebo in flower. On Sunday I got my wish. It looked truly stunning with the lilac petals dripping from the creeper inside and out of the metal structure.

Once inside, you are half-hidden from the world outside and the air is thick with the scent of the flowers. A low wooden bench curves around one side of the gazebo – the perfect place for a romantic moment.

I've also been waiting to see the bluebells in flower in the conservation area. There is something very English about the carpet of bluebells under leafy oaks, dappled sunlight drifting through their branches. A great setting for one of those lazy, time-stands-still romantic walks.

And just in case you're getting overwhelmed with all this loveliness, I thought I'd finish with a photograph of me in my Royal Botanic Gardens rain poncho/groundsheet. I brought it along to sit on while we had our picnic and my nieces managed to persuade me to model it for them. It's amazing what a giggling pair of teenagers can persuade you to do on a lazy Sunday afternoon. I'm not going to even mention the cartwheels...