Some Interesting Things about my book, I Don't Want to Talk About It, that you probably didn't know.

As you may or may not know, depending on how relentlessly you stalk me, 'I Don't Want to Talk About It' is shortlisted in the e-book category of the 2015 Love Stories Awards.  This is all the provocation I need to tell you some Interesting Things about the book.  You may or may not know some of them already, because I am well known for my inability to shut up about my books, but anyway.  Here goes:

The churchyard setting was inspired by the view from the side of my house.

It's the shadow of a post and rail fence, not an enormous ladder propped against my house. In case you were wondering.

The church has a Saxon sundial, you know.  I'm not quite sure why, perhaps they consider that time was more accurate back then and just refuse to come into the 21st century.  But anyway. I have spent a lot of time walking through that churchyard (which is actually tiny, and you can't really walk through it, there's only one way in.  So more...around). A lot of the names on the graves are local (as are the graves themselves, we tend not to import dead people round here. There's no call for it, you see), and the whole place is what set me off thinking about Winter - the girl writing a book about gravestones.

The setting of Great Leys is based on Stokesley, about 30 miles north of where I live.

As far as I am concerned it is a positive metropolis - having a supermarket, two schools (primary and secondary), a whole host of shops and lots of houses.  Which is why I am baffled when the book is reviewed and the reviewer starts with 'Winter Gregory has moved to the remote little Yorkshire village of Great Leys'.  Because Stokesley is neither remote, little nor a village. It is, however, in Yorkshire, so...points for that.

There is a strong theme of sibling affection running through the book.  Winter is an identical twin, separated from her sister Daisy by a lot of miles. Daisy, you see, lives in Australia, and Winter struggles with the distance between them.  I, too, have a sibling, however we are not twins, nor are we identical, on account of him being nearly bald.

This is he. His name is David, and we are separated by a lot of miles, which is probably for the best because I smell.  He lives in Exeter, and is, as far as brothers go, pretty wonderful.

In the book, Scarlet gets a guinea pig called Bobso. We had, during the children's growing up years, many many guinea pigs.  My eldest daughter was quite a dab hand at sexing them, but even she would occasionally get it wrong and we ended up with about twenty at one point.  But, on the plus side, I didn't need a lawn mower.  Or a burglar alarm, because if anyone approached within twenty feet of their enormous run, they would all set to squeaking like tiny little cars being broken into.

So. There you have it. Some Things you Probably Never Knew about I Don't Want to Talk About It. Ironically titled, since I just did...