My niece’s wedding on Saturday was held in an idyllic setting in the Devon countryside - a beautiful ancient church, accessed by a long flight of steps - you can get an idea of it from this photo

Fortunately the sun shone throughout the whole event - it might not have felt quite so idyllic if we’d all been squelching up the aisle and dripping rainwater all over the pews. Our journey down the M5 the day before had been accompanied by torrential storms, and the skies opened on us again this evening when we got back home.

One good thing for me about long car journeys is that for the last fifteen years or so, I’ve been able to read a book when I’m in the passenger seat. This weekend, my book was the aptly named A Seriously Useful Author’s Guide to Marketing and Publicising Books by Mary Cavanagh. I know I’m going to be dipping into various chapters over the next few months, while I’m working at getting my next novel, Paper Lanterns, into print. (Thank you, Mary, for producing this well-timed book!)

In my previous posts I was talking about my first writing course on the island of Kithera in Crete. There have been a lot of changes in the world of publishing and marketing books since then (about seven years ago now).

I’d say that the ‘real’ start of The Dangerous Sports Euthanasia Society was during that week in Kithera, in June 2001. It was my individual tutorials with Helen Carey that helped me discover my main character’s back-story and her motivations for the future - I already had a general idea of what was going to happen to seventy-five year old Agnes Borrowdale, but it wasn’t till Helen asked a few key questions, that I realised I was focusing too much on the intricacies of the plot, and didn’t yet know my characters from the inside out.

One of difficulties that Helen identified was the relationship between Agnes and her son, Jack, who places her in an old people’s home, from which she escapes at the start of the book. As the main protagonist, Agnes must engage the reader from the start, and maintain their interest and affections to the end. I had to show that Jack himself, though a flawed character, was not unsympathetic. I also needed to show why Jack, and his new partner, Monica, felt that The Harmony Home for The Young At Heart, was the best place for Agnes.

Gradually, these characters, and many more, developed both inner and outer lives of their own, as the action moved to and from Sussex to Nottingham and Birmingham. I had enormous fun in getting to know them all, and extricating them from the various awkward situations I landed them in.

Even now, as I think about them I can see and hear them in my head. They’re absolutely solid and real as the friends and relations I met up with again this weekend at the wedding. And yet at the same time, I’m fully aware of the fact that I invented everyone of them. (And I still regard myself as sane!)