This is a blog post for readers as well as writers. As I am always telling my students, ‘setting is everything in a novel,’ so let me explain more…

As a reader what tempts me to read a book by a new author? To be honest, it is often the genre as I love to read historical and crime novels. Sometimes it is the blurb on the back cover, or under the title on an online selling site that catches my eye, However, mainly it is the setting. Perhaps that is why my Woolworths novels have been so successful as readers are drawn to the store that holds such fond memories for them. My Teashop series is set on the Kent coast and who doesn’t love a seaside story set during WW2?

However, for me the place must be real and hold some significance in my life – even the Erith Woolworths store was real, as were the two Lyon’s teashops in Ramsgate and Margate. As for Butlins – I’ll say no more! 

Of course, once I’ve enjoyed a book by a new author I will return again and again. A friend recently introduced me to the The Crossing Places by Elly Griffiths when it was chosen for my students’ reading group. Three weeks later I’m reading book four in the series – don’t you just love it when you are able to binge read fifteen books in a series? My husband is doing the same with Jeffrey Archer’s Clifton Chronicles. What grabbed my attention with The Crossing Places was the setting. The windswept Norfolk marshes is such a dramatic place and adds such atmosphere to the stories, and of course I’ve visited the area, so it resonated with me. Saga authors such as Jean Fullerton, Lizzie Lane, and Kate Thompson pull me right into their stories as I know the settings, and the research behind their books is impeccable.

I don’t like books with made up settings – there, I said it! Perhaps that is why I’m not a fan of fantasy novels. I need to know that the place where a story is set is real and I’m able to visit, or more importantly I have visited. It may be that the story is set before I was born, but then I have the joy of learning about the history of the area I know and love.

I’ve written before about why I chose the Erith branch of Woolworths as the setting for The Woolworths Girls. This book was a standalone story, but my lovely readers took it so much to heart that I wrote another, and another … I always set my books in Kent, my ‘girls’ may move away but they always return to Kent. Being born at The Hainault maternity home in Erith, at a time it was still truly Kent, I grew up knowing the area and hearing stories from way back. When I needed somewhere for Sarah Caselton to work when she moved in with her nan, Ruby in 1938 I simply took a walk in my mind until I came to that well known store in Pier Road. Having been a Woolworths Saturday Girl, I knew it would be the perfect place to set my story.

With my Teashop Girls books, I wanted to write about the Lyons’ Nippies during WW2 – and they had to live in Kent. I soon found two teashops that had existed in Ramsgate and Margate and was delighted as I had fond memories of the area from childhood holidays with my parents.  

As I write this blog post I am just finishing The Woolworths Girl’s Promise, which is set at the end of WW1. This story is about the early life of the much-loved Betty Billington, who we all know ends up working at the Erith branch of Woolworths. Of course, she needed to have worked in a branch of Woolworths that existed from 1918. I could have made up a branch, that would have been so easy and saved so much research time, but I knew I would be letting down my readers who want to know my books are true historical novels rather than a work of fiction. To begin with I wanted the store to be close to Erith and Crayford would have been ideal However, that branch did not open until much later. Next, I looked at Bexleyheath, but the store opened in 1930, and besides that Betty was injured at the store when an oil bomb exploded in The Woolworths Girls – would she not have mentioned she’d worked there years before if the store had been around at that time?

I researched for weeks on end trying to find a store that existed in the right time and place - and was in Kent. I couldn’t help but laugh when I found the ideal Woolworths store – it was in Ramsgate! The building is still there to this day, but sadly no longer a Woolworths store.

Why are you attracted to certain books – is it the setting?

The Woolworths Saturday Girls is available in all supermarkets, bookshops and online. Order your copy now> Why not sign up for my newsletter and hear more about my books?

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