Home Thoughts Weekly

Kirsty Ferry Today, I'm delighted to welcome fellow Choc Lit author, Kirsty Ferry to my blog to talk about her latest book, The Girl in the Photograph, the third in her Rossetti Mysteries series.  Here's Kirsty... First of all, let me thank Chris for letting me invade her blog today. I know that Chris loves to write about beautiful homes and Interior Design, so in order to (hopefully) make this a bit more interesting than just the random ramblings of me as an author, I thought I’d talk about locations and, more specifically, the houses where two of my characters live. I love doing research , and to me one of the most important things as I start a novel is to get an idea of the ‘personal space’ of a character. If I can’t imagine them in their house, then I might as well give up. After all, they’ve got to have a base, and as I have quite a cinematic mind, I like to imagine my people walking around, going to bed, making a cuppa, opening a bottle of wine… in short, doing a...

On the train to Cardiff again! February 1st sees me in Cardiff again where Lily and Bee have been struck down with a sickness bug. By Friday everyone’s on the mend so I come home, but on Monday Lily is so ill we’re all fearful of meningitis. To everyone’s relief, it’s ‘only’ a severe, acute sinus infection, but since Lily can’t even stand without feeling sick and dizzy, I dash down to help with the mini-hurricane that is twenty-month-old Bee. Poor Bee has had a rotten winter with a series of horrible colds and a perforated eardrum which has temporarily affected her hearing, but not her ability to make herself understood. Just after 6 am Bee bursts in, thrilled to bits to find me on the futon in the guest room. What to do first? Empty Nana’s handbag, exclaiming with delight over every item or take Nana’s running shoes for a spin? Bee’s not the type of child to sit passively in front of the TV, although she is partial to a bit of Teletubbies and Twirlywoos, so most ...