I became a novelist in 2018 after doing a masters. My first published novel was a romantic comedy featuring an older protagonist called Evie Gallagher who bought a camper van and travelled to France in search of fun, mischief and love.

            I wasn’t sure who I wanted to write like, although my favourite novelists ranged from Kamila Shamsie to Jeanette Winterson and Bernadine Evaristo, from Cormack McCarthy to Roddy Doyle. But I didn’t really write like any of them.

I’ve always enjoyed reading widely: I love Mary Beard and Emily Brontë, James Joyce. The classics always grab me; I adore reading about stories set in the past, discovering the culture, the history, the way people lived. The first book I remember reading that made me cry was The Black Tulip by Dumas, set in 1672, and I was hooked. I was seven years old.

I taught theatre for a while, and Shakespeare was at the heart of what I did. It wasn’t just the brilliant stories that filled my imagination – Macbeth, Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, Othello – but the power of the characters, the time and place, the comedy, the tragedy, the language. It occurred to me that understanding history was less to do with learning facts and more to do with immersing oneself in a story. How much more meaningful is history if we feel transported to a place in the past, the sights and smells and sounds, the feelings…

Then my wonderful publisher Boldwood Books asked me if I would write dual timeline novels. Of course I said yes, and my Elena Collins books came to be. I read so much as research, from Barbara Erskine to Hilary Mantel to Eleanor Porter. And so many more. I love the sense of history being still imprinted on the present, the evidence of it is still all around us.

I’m fascinated too by the experiences of women through history; their status, their role, their influence, their opportunities (or lack of them!) and how they were perceived by others in the community. From this fascination, several novels were born.

The Witch’s Tree is set in Somerset, moving between the present time and 1682, where Grace Cotter is accused of a terrible crime. The Lady of the Loch takes us back to the time of Robert de Brus where feisty kitchen maid Agnes Fitzgerald falls in love with warrior Cam Buchanan. The Daughter of the Fens goes back further to CE61, to a time of Roman occupation and Boudicca’s revolt. It’s the story of Iceni slave Brea’s struggle for freedom and how it affects the lives of those she loves.

Central to these stories are the ordinary women who lived then and now. The glue that binds the dual timelines is the supernatural element, the residual spirit of the past that has something to communicate to someone in the present day about injustice or past hurt. It’s meant more to question and mystify the reader than to terrify, but it’s a strong component of the stories.

I love writing all my novels, but this genre hooks me in. I read extensively, I research online, I seek out any evidence I can from experts and institutions, I write to professionals and ask for information. I travel miles to locations where I look for inspiration and so far, each time I have travelled somewhere, I’ve come home with the bones of a story. The characters are in my head, I’m listening to their voices: both past and present conversations are already buzzing. It’s gripping.

In order to write The Witch’s Tree, I walked in the Blackdown hills and found a place called Wychanger. I travelled to a haunted castle in the Highlands for The Lady of the Loch. I sat out in the cold fens at midnight waiting to feel something extraordinary and found it in an old abandoned station, which appears as Little Rymer in The Daughter of the Fens.

Right now, I’m researching the fourth novel, waking up at dawn to stand quietly in the mist of an eerie Cornish cove. I already have the characters ready for this one, which will be another witchy tale, although very different to the first.

Historical novels bring so much more to the page than just a setting in the past, which in itself is magnificent. They bring characters, romance, dilemmas, courage, conflicts and tragedy. And I’m a real sucker for all of that.

I hope you are too.