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My dad was a great storyteller. It was listening to his tales about growing up in a Norfolk village during the Second World War that sparked my interest in this period, and eventually inspired me to write historical fiction.

My latest book, Secrets and Promises, has a good dose of family history in it, including some details direct from my dad. The bicycle which Bessie rides, a trade bike, like the ones shops used to use for their deliveries, was inspired by my dad’s own bicycle. Just after my parents were married, he bought a trade bike from a scrapyard for 10 shillings and gave it an overhaul and new tyres. He rode that bicycle to work every day for many years, and rather than having a wicker basket in the front, he had a large cardboard box which he replaced for another one when it became too battered.

When I was little, I rode in the box at the front until I was able to ride a bicycle of my own. I can remember sitting cross legged in the box, loving bowling along the road with my dad pedalling behind.

During the Second World War, many things were in short supply in England, and so people improvised with what they could find. My dad and his brothers used to gather window (the thin strips of foil dropped from planes to confuse the radar) which they found hanging in the hedgerows around the village. The shiny strips made perfect decorations for their Christmas tree, and this inspired me to use the same in Secrets and Promises.

“The house was looking beautiful too, Bessie thought. They’d trimmed the living room up with holly and ivy, draping sprigs over the mantelpiece and around picture frames. The pine-scented Christmas tree, which Harry had cut down, was laden with decorations. Old ones which had been in their family for years, and some new ones made by Peter and Marigold. They had collected dropped silver foil window, from bomber planes, which gathered in hedges and turned it into decorations that glittered and twinkled prettily against the green tree.”

Out now – Secrets and Promises is available in ebook and paperback.

UK https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1914443004

USA https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08Y59F7FM

Canada https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B08Y59F7FM

Australia https://www.amazon.com.au/dp/B08Y59F7FM

Spain https://www.amazon.es/dp/B08Y59F7FM

Apple https://books.apple.com/gb/book/id1558206636

Kobo https://www.kobo.com/gb/en/ebook/secrets-and-promises

Barnes & Noble https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/1139014118?ean=2940165178788

The house at Orchard Farm, in Secrets and Promises, is no ordinary home. It’s made from old railway carriages! This style of house was a way to build a home cheaply and were common in Norfolk, especially after WW1.

I visited the North Norfolk Railway’s fabulous railway cottage for research. The beautiful, bottle-green house is made from one old railway carriage and has been set up to re-create how it would have been in 1935. 

In Secrets and Promises, Bessie’s and Harry’s home is bigger, made from two carriages, joined end to end, plus an extension built on the back, but otherwise very similar this one. 

Secrets and Promises is out on 6th April and available now to pre-order at:

Amazon – https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B08Y59F7FM/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_hsch_vapi_tkin_p1_i2

Kobo – https://www.kobo.com/gb/en/ebook/secrets-and-promises

Apple – https://books.apple.com/gb/book/secrets-and-promises/id1558206636

My childhood growing up on a smallholding in rural Norfolk has been a big influence on my writing. Secrets and Promises has a lot of my experiences woven into it, from teaching a calf how to drink milk from a bucket to making butter. At the time, I had no idea that I would use these in stories one day.

I loved being around our animals and adored the cows. We’d had them from calves and they were very friendly and gentle. They were Guernsey breed and named Beauty and Buttercup. Their milk was rich and the cream from it was perfect for butter making.

We didn’t have a churn, but instead used to make the butter in a very large sterilized Horlicks jar, which would be tipped upside down and back again, in a rocking motion, over and over again, and made your arms ache! This would go on until the yellow granules of butter formed and gradually clumped together leaving the buttermilk. Then my mum would wash the butter, add a little salt and use my grandmother’s wooden butter pats to form a block of butter.

In Secrets and Promises, eight-year-old Marigold experiences such things when she arrives at Orchard Farm in Norfolk after having been evacuated from London. It was lovely to re-live my experiences through her eyes as I wrote the book.

Secrets and Promises is out on 6th April and available now to pre-order at:

Amazon – https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B08Y59F7FM/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_hsch_vapi_tkin_p1_i2##

Kobo – https://www.kobo.com/gb/en/ebook/secrets-and-promises

Apple – https://books.apple.com/gb/book/secrets-and-promises/id1558206636

The Women’s Institute played an important role on the Home Front during the Second World War. In The Mother’s Day Club, the village’s WI is at the forefront of welcoming and helping the evacuee mothers settle into the village.

Julie Summer’s brilliant book, Jambusters, was a brilliant research source for discovering the many ways in which the WI rallied round during the war years.

Soon after war was declared in 1939, the women of the WI began their work of increasing food production for the country. Thinking that food supplies would probably become rationed, as happened during the First World War, they started by harvesting the abundant supply of blackberries and turning them into jam. Extra sugar was obtained by the WI from The Ministry of Food, to make the jam and this was distributed to local WI’s who requested it. The jam they made was sold at WI markets.

I love blackberry picking each year and making jam with the berries. The colours and smells as the jam cooks are glorious. The taste of blackberry and apple jam with its delicious mellow, fruitness, is wonderful on toast on a winter’s day.

Coming up soon, exclusively for my newsletter subscribers is a special competition to win a signed copy of The Mother’s Day Club and I will also make the winner a pair of handknitted socks, in true 1940s style. There is still time to sign up for my newsletter here and get a free copy of my ebook of short stories too, if you’d like to enter.

Rookery House is the house owned by Thea, and where expectant evacuee mother Marianne is billeted after she arrives in the village of Great Plumstead.

It’s a detached Victorian house standing on its own, just outside the village, in large grounds, and is inspired by the house I grew up in and other similar ones in the village. There’s plenty of room there for Thea and those who live with her.

For some time after I started writing The Mother’s Day Club, I didn’t have a name for the house. One day when I was walking home from the beach, past the field with cows grazing and where rooks were foraging, the name Rookery House popped into my mind and I knew that was perfect for Thea’s home.

Coming up soon, exclusively for my newsletter subscribers is a special competition to win a signed copy of The Mother’s Day Club and I will also make the winner a pair of handknitted socks, in true 1940s style. There is still time to sign up for my newsletter here, and also get a free copy of my ebook of short stories too, if you’d like to enter.

The two other main characters in The Mother’s Day Club, who give homes to evacuee expectant mothers, are sisters, Thea and Prue – both in their forties. They were inspired by reading Virginia Nicholson’s fascinating book Singled Out, which highlights the life of young women in the 1920s and 30s, after the huge losses of men during the First World War.

Thea is unmarried, her fiancé having been killed in France, and she has recently returned to live in the village after years of living in London where she ran her own business. The inspiration for that business came from something I read in Singled Out, about working women in London finding it difficult to find affordable meals during the working day. The idea for Thea’s business – mobile catering for such workers – was born. Having decided to return to live in Norfolk, Thea has sold the business and bought the house she’s always loved back in her home village in Norfolk.

Thea is a good friend of Station Officer Violet Steele from the East End Angels books, the pair of them having worked as ambulance drivers together in France during World War One. I couldn’t resist having a link to the East End Angels books, and this was the perfect way. In the second book of this new Women on the Home Front series, Thea visits Violet in London and goes to Station 75 and meets Winnie, Frankie and Bella.

Prue is married, but all is not well in her life. Her marriage was one of convenience rather than love, having married a widower with two young boys. Her husband Victory is horrible, but great fun to write!

Coming up soon, exclusively for my newsletter subscribers is a special competition to win a signed copy of The Mother’s Day Club and I will also make the winner a pair of handknitted socks, in true 1940s style. There is still time to sign up for my newsletter here, and also get a free copy of my ebook of short stories too, if you’d like to enter.