Today I’m joining the blog tour for Dark Days At The Beach Hotel. I’m sharing my Q&A with the author with thanks to Rachel Gilbey at Rachel’s Random Resources for inviting me on the tour and to Francesca Capaldi for answering my questions!

Have you always wanted to write?

Oh yes, ever since I was a child. I spent a lot of time making up characters and stories for them, even then. Sometimes I’d include characters from programmes I enjoyed. I used to swing for hours in my garden, or roller skate up and down the road, doing this. As an adult, long journeys by car or on the train would be the time for this. But I never really wrote anything down until I joined a writing class in my forties.

What were your previous jobs? Have they helped you with your writing process?

I was originally a primary school teacher. Later, I did office work in my husband’s business and then became an exam invigilator. I’ve done a lot of voluntary jobs, like nursery school supplies officer, a local support coordinator and later chairman for the National Childbirth Trust, ran their toddler club and also helped run a Sunday school and buggy service.

I’m not sure that any of these jobs have really helped my writing process, but of course meeting people always gives you lots of ideas for stories and characters.

What was your inspiration for Dark Days at the Beach Hotel?

The series was inspired by a real hotel in Littlehampton, actually called the Beach Hotel. The hotel was, as it is in the novel, on the common near the promenade. My father’s café, where I worked as a teenager, was also nearby, and I was often on the beach with my mum or friends, with a good view of it. I even remember sitting by the hotel wall once as a fourteen-year-old, with my first boyfriend, snogging (as we used to call it!). I passed the hotel on countless occasions, but I never went inside.

A few years ago, a literary agent asked to see me. She wasn’t interested in what I’d sent her, but wondered what other ideas I might have. Recalling the hotel for some reason that morning, I came up with the idea a few hours before I met her. She didn’t take me on, but I wrote the first in the series, A New Start at the Beach Hotel anyway, and it was eventually bought by publisher Hera Books.

How do you construct your characters? Do they have traits of people you know?

Most of my characters just sort of appear in my mind fully formed as I’m thinking up ideas for the story. It’s almost as if they exist and they’re just waiting to meet me. For instance, when Edie arrives at Littlehampton station in the first Beach Hotel book and comes across the porter there, Norman. Because I rather liked this chirpy chappy, he ended up getting a bigger part than I’d first intended.

Sometimes, if I’ve been watching a series on television and I’m just beginning to write a character, he or she might take on some aspect or look of that character. For instance, when I first introduced Detective Inspector Davis and Sergeant Gardner in A New Start at the Beach Hotel, I’d been binge watching Father Brown so, in my head, the DI and sergeant had similarities to Inspector Sullivan and Sergeant Goodfellow. Very occasionally I purposefully make a character look like someone else. With the new DI in Dark Days at the Beach Hotel, Sam Toshack, I decided to make him look like Scott Tracy from the original Thunderbirds. This was because Scott was my first ever crush as a seven-year-old and still is a favourite character. (The initials being the same are purely coincidental!)

As for the antagonists, yes, I do sometimes give them traits, and even the looks, of people who have been less than nice to me. I’m not giving away any names, obviously. You know what they say: Never cross an author, or you’ll end up a ‘baddie’ in one of their books!

What does your writing process look like? Are youa plotter or a pantser?

I’m definitely a plotter. I have the whole story worked out before I even begin to write. In fact, I have a complete scene breakdown. I have been a pantser in the past, but I find a novel so much easier to write when planned. That’s not to say I don’t think of other sub-plots along the way, as I often do, and then I have to weave them in. In the fourth Beach Hotel book, which I’m currently writing, I’ve just thought of a way to add a link between two characters, that will make their relationship all the more poignant.  

How did you research? Did you enjoy it?

Oh, my goodness, I absolutely love research. I could do it all day long. It probably won’t shock you to read that I’m a history graduate. When deciding what to do after my degree, it was a toss up between a post grad teaching certificate or a diploma in archive studies, as I’d enjoyed one of the degree modules using primary sources (original records). In the end, teaching won, but I’ve never lost my love of research.

A lot of the research is secondary, from books about Littlehampton and Sussex, but I also do some primary research. Much of it is online now, and there are some wonderful newspaper resources, old maps, old directories and the census for instance. I’ve also visited the library and museum in Littlehampton. I do have to be careful not to spend too much time researching and to get on with the novel. I often imagine my characters standing around, tapping their feet, waiting for me to get on with their story!

Who are your favourite writers? Are you influenced by them?

My favourite authors change all the time. I loved Ann Cleeves’ Shetland novels and Julia Wassmer’s Whitstable Pearl Mysteries. I also enjoy novels by Lisa Jewel and Freya North. I went through a phase of reading fantasy novels, my favourites being by Garth Nix and JRR Tolkien. I love the books by 1940s writer, Elizabeth Goudge. 

Have I been influenced by them? In the quest to write as well as I can, yes, though I don’t think I imitate any of their styles.

If you could invite three people, living or dead, to dinner, who would they be and why?

That’s a toughy! I wrote a blog post about this some years ago and I seem to recall the dinner table becoming rather large! Okay… Lucy Worsley, Michael Wood and David Attenborough. Could I squeeze James Acaster and Zoe Lyons in? And maybe Richard III at the end? I’d love to know what happened to the two princes in the tower. 

Who would you least like to be stuck in a lift with and why?

Emperor Palpatine from Star Wars. ’Nuff said. 

Who would play the main characters in a film version of Dark Days at the Beach Hotel? 

Helen Bygrove could be played by Claire Foy or Carey Mulligan. Douglas Bygrove could be played by Tomos Eames (who plays DS Joe Keeler in Shakespeare and Hathaway). As for DI Toshack, since Scott Tracy is a puppet, I have no idea!

What do you like to do in your spare time?

I love going out with friends, whatever it is we’re doing. I enjoy the theatre and cinema. I like a party. I love being by the seaside, and although I don’t live on the coast anymore, I’m lucky that my younger daughter does. I also do a writing retreat in Littlehampton every year, with fellow writers Elaine Roberts and Angela Johnson. I love spending time with my three grandchildren, taking them out and having fun. They’re all such great characters. I also enjoy gardening and family research.

What is next for you?

There are three more Beach Hotel books in the pipeline. I’m currently writing the fourth and already have the fifth and sixth planned. After that I’m not sure. I have lots of ideas and have been asked whether I’d consider writing cosy crime (because of the storyline in Dark Days), but we’ll have to see.  

Favourites:

Book: The Herb of Grace by Elizabeth Goudge 

Film: Georgy Girl 

Band/Singer: I like so many genres of music, but one of my favourite bands is Genesis.

TV show: Ghosts

Colour? Green

Place? The seaside

Biscuit? Tiffin. (If that counts as a biscuit!)

***

Dark Days At The Beach Hotel is available from Amazon.

You can follow the rest of the blog tour here: