I’m sure most of us have felt the excitement when we meet a new character. I wonder, do yours arrive fully formed? Itching to tell you about their cat, colourful past and well paid job? Or do you work hard to find that job for them? First buying them the suit and driving them to the interview, only for them to walk out half way through because they didn’t feel the right vibe.

And what flavour are they? A sweet little girl? A salty old guy? Are they bitter or has their relationship with another character soured? Mix them together and you might have something tasty, or not. You’ll still need a good recipe, or plot for them to work with though.

A lot of my characters have arrived whole and very much animated, as they did actually exist in the past. I already knew some of their story, like Anna’s, for example. Her husband was imprisoned in the Tower of London for treason and before being beheaded, she took some of his hair, wove it with her own and embroidered the bedsheet they shared. You can still see said bedsheet in the Museum of London, apparently. Plus the fact, as I’ve already mentioned in my first blog, at the execution, she made off with his severed head. The definition of ‘you couldn’t make it up!’ But fantastic inspiration and a great indication of who she was. 

One of my favourite characters is Millican Dalton however. I have mentioned him before too but he definitely deserves more attention. When we first moved to the area, I fell in love with the romantic tale of this cave dwelling eccentric who I shared a surname with. There isn’t too much information about him but I have visited the cave he called home. Far from being a hermit, he took many men and women walking and climbing in the late 1800s and early last century, when women participating in outdoor pursuits was pretty much unheard of. In fact, nowadays he would have still been thought of as a pioneer, living simply as a teetotal, vegetarian pacifist. His only vices were strong coffee and woodbine cigarettes. 

It was completely natural therefore that I should want to meet him in my novel. And now, I’m pleased to say we’re great friends and he pops in (to my head) regularly to say hi. We’ve been on many adventures, from watching and learning about the local landscape, to exhuming graves and escaping cannon fire.

Other than the historical characters, I admit many of the present day characters in my novel are real too. One of the main characters is loosely based on my best friend Sue. I say loosely because she does go on a bit of a murderous spree in the past, but with kinda good reason. She was one of the first people to read my first draft and has been hugely supportive and enthusiastic, and very forgiving that I have blackened her name! The nice thing is though, we’ll get to live forever this way. I don’t mean that in a ‘we’re going to be famous’ way, but it’s just lovely to think that she can tell her grandkids “that’s me, you know!”