Full supporting cast

The most popular question to ask an author seems to be - where do you get your ideas? Answer to that one - they just seem to happen. The next popular question is where do you get your characters? Are they based on real people? The answer to that is NO. I will never put YOU in a book, so you can stop hoping/worrying.

In general, characters arrive out of nowhere too. There is quite a big and varied cast in the forthcoming Christmas paperback - What Happens at Christmas - including a very precocious four year old, a handful of movie stars, some people from the publishing industry and a ginger and white cat, who was inspired by Ming, a family legend who died before I was born.

I have indulged myself a little with the hero and heroine, I have to admit, as they are both writers and I have given them all the things a writer dreams of ... Drew is mega successful, the type that causes queues around the block when he does signings and his books are made into films and he gets asked to do TV programmes and stuff - although that actually gets him into a lot of trouble ... He does a lot of extreme research too - he writes fantasy adventure, and that is not me at all. Lori is a would-be author when the book starts and then ... but that would be a spoiler, so I won't say any more.

And the other notable thing about the book is that Devlin, the hero of Never Coming Home, makes a guest appearance. That wasn't planned at all, but when the point came when Drew had really got himself in a mess and needed help - well, who else was I going to call?

It's not your usual Christmas book - not with the hero managing to get himself kidnapped and then not knowing who, or why ...  There are villains, and they get their come-uppance, so that is probably un- Christmassy too, although, to be fair, that does not happen at Christmas. But is does have snow, in the Brecon Beacons, because every Christmas book has to have snow, right? I had to do something traditional and the snow was very handy, as it kept Lori and Drew together over the holiday itself, chaperoned, of course, by the four year old and the cat. 

I better stop, before I give too much away. If you decide to buy the paperback (It's on pre-order now, for 1st December) I hope you enjoy it.