This, my 10th novel, gave me the chance to set another book in my beloved North East. Pillow Talk won the Romantic Novel of the Year Award whilst I was writing Secrets. Often, the title only comes right at the end. The working title for this novel was ‘Runaway Home‘ – which (secretly) I still prefer. It was time for a new cover-look for this novel – and I fought hard for something totally different to what I’ve had before and what’s ‘out there’. Having worked as a picture-researcher when I was a struggling unpublished author, I chose covers for other people’s novels. I became very good at it – and also rather opinionated. I am my publishers’ worst nightmare – but my finicky perfectionism is, I feel, worth it in the long run. This is also the first novel when I’ve featured a dog, a child and a house as characters in their own right. And worked hard to combat whimsy. In the name of research, I also had to cross over the top of the Transporter Bridge, 160′ over the River Tees – facing my vertigo head-on to do my characters justice. How many romantic interludes in contemporary fiction have been set in Middlesbrough, I wonder…
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How I love research – it’s a true perk of my career. I spent delightful periods of time in the North East, in the jewellery quarter of Hatton Garden – and in a cage just off Regent Street. The cage was a security area within the offices of the Tanzanite Foundation (which oversees ethical mining of the gem) and I’d sit there handling carat after carat of this magical stone. Just a tiny nugget of a story hidden in a newspaper can fire my imagination – and reading about a 15 year old girl who woke along the arm of a crane in her nightie having sleep-walked there, became the springboard for full research into this fascinating, dreadful affliction.
The scenarios when Petra was doing her pottery classes were based on fact – that really was me. And yes, there was a sixth-former who’d gently serenade me with his guitar from a chaste distance….wonder where he is now! As with Chloe, some of these characters are not based on people at all. Arlo’s naughty schoolboys are in fact horses I know – my own included.
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Sometimes, a topic grabs me and won’t let go until I’ve written it out of my system. This book marked a subtle but distinct shift for me. It was edgier. It had undeniably darker themes. It was also the first time that I had to choreograph two main characters and not just one. I was fascinated by the sex industry – specifically who the punters actually are. I was appalled/captivated by the fact that it’s frequented not by the Dirty Mac brigade – but by normal blokes. For my research, I went into phoneboxes and took the calling-cards of the girls – and simply phoned and said “Er – hullo, can I have a quick chat…” Again, this book was very humbling for me. But quite tiring to write. Especially because I had to be true to my characters – which meant they simply had to go their own separate ways at the end. Many of my readers didn’t like this – they understood, they agreed with me – but they didn’t like it at all. I was immensely flattered by this response – that the book, the characters could be that compelling. On a lighter note, how lovely to see Sally and Richard all those years later…!
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Ah, Pip the clown. I had to persuade a lot of people that she wouldn’t be a scary clown – I couldn’t believe how many people actually have an aversion to traditional clowns! The Clown Doctors were fascinating to research and shadow – very humbling too, not least because I was pregnant (with my second child) whilst writing this book. The Clown’s Gallery in Dalston, east London, was a fascinating place – not least for their extensive collection of painted eggs, on which clowns can ‘copyright’ their make up. This was to be the last book in the McCabe series – not written as a trilogy, but interlinked nonetheless. By the time I finished this novel, I knew, though, that I’d revisit the sisters. But I needed some space from them first. And a posse of brand new characters needed my attention in the meantime. So Love Rules was next.
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This novel took me back to my roots in Art History – I worked for a while as an archivist at the National Arts Collection Fund and I based the little room in which Fen hides away on the one I used. She has to choose between two very different men – bizarrely, she ends up with the one I wouldn’t have chosen. But that’s characters for you – the author ultimately has little control. During this time, I fell pregnant with my first child. My hormones were all over the place. My four previous novels had all been pretty raunchy but Fen was (initially) OUTRAGEOUS. For the first time, my editor put thick red lines through many paragraphs and scribbled in the margins such gems as: “Yuck!” or “Tone it down, woman!” Fen had a change of cover design – and the model was none other than Sienna Miller.
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Though this was my 4th novel, it was this book that really drummed home to me that I WAS AN AUTHOR. I had long been a fan of the Tour de France – from the comfort of my sofa…and now, my writing credentials enabled me to bag an access-all-areas pass. Bizarrely, life imitated art rather than vice versa – and I followed in Cat’s footsteps, spending my time on the Tour masquerading as a journalist, writing for the Times, for radio and for cycling magazines. The first Tour I went on was 1998 – which was the one with all the huge drug scandals. It was won by the inimitable Marco Pantani – who later died from a drugs overdose. The next Tour was won by Lance Armstrong. Many of the real riders, all of whom were very kind and welcoming, traded anecdotes or rides in their team cars for a cameo appearance in the book!
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When I was trying to figure out whether or not I wanted to do a PhD, I went traveling in the USA one summer. I fell in love with Vermont – its landscape, its people, their way of life. I finished writing Chloe in summer 1996, Sally was due to be published that November – which gave me ample time to return to New England and to the love people I’d met 6 years previously. But I wasn’t returning as a tourist – I had my writer’s cap on this time. With the American links in this novel, it was fitting to have the launch party at Joe Allen in London. Burgers and fries all round. But by then, with the third book done, dusted and riding high in the charts, my thoughts turned from America to Europe – specifically France, the setting for my fourth novel, Cat.
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Back in 1991, trying to figure out how my new computer worked, I found myself writing the opening of the sort of novel I wanted to read. The thrill of being able to write what I wanted – and then hiding it – was utterly liberating….hence the utter raunchiness of the opening paragraph! Of course, I couldn’t afford research trips so the locations features in Sally are those well known to me – London and also Mull, on the Scotland’s west coast.
I was working in a coffee and tea shop at the time – and my colleagues were all ears to hear how this novel was progressing. The meal that Richard prepares Sally was suggested by Michele – an Italian with whom I worked at that time.
This novel took four years to write. It was finally published in November 1996. I’ll never forget the shock and sublime thrill of seeing it on the shelf of a bookshop. I feel very fondly towards the characters – hence involving them in minor roles in Love Rules – just so I could see what they’d been up to in the intervening years!
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