So why the hell did I choose to write a dual timeline, time travelling adventure mystery as my first novel? Well, to be honest, I didn’t really have a choice in the matter. My characters just kept nagging. And waking me up at three am. And whispering tantalising anecdotes in my ear whilst cooking breakfast.

Sadly whilst I don’t have the benefit of a time travel enabling oak tree, a lot of my characters did exist and they wanted their stories told. So when Anna, the wife of a Jacobite traitor beheaded on Tower Hill, wanted me to tell the story of how she caught her husband’s severed head, well how could I say no? Or Millican, the cave dwelling eccentric who pioneered mountain guiding in the Lakes? I couldn’t exactly refuse. Plus he is my namesake – another Dalton. And Heinrich, an embittered German copper miner in 1569 living on Derwent Isle, mining copper at the behest of Queen Elizabeth I. Well Heinrich I suppose is a representation of those miners rather than one actual person but it’s not like I could leave his story out, is it?

and Sam, the main protagonist, yeah, me, mostly, except, no I’m not having an affair with a married local doctor.