B is for Bournemouth, where much of the story of Imogen Imagine takes place. The local music scene is where Carl’s career is nurtured, and it’s where we find Immy struggling to put her life back together. I’m not a native of Bournemouth, but I’ve lived here for 28 years now. That's longer than anywhere else I’ve lived, and it’s definitely where I think of as home.

I grew up in Orpington, Kent, and lived there all through my schooldays and during holidays from university in Stirling, Scotland. After graduating, I spent a few years each in a number of places, moving each time to take up new jobs as a church youth worker. The last of those was in Bournemouth, and that’s where I’ve stayed ever since.

Several of my writer friends have chosen to make the place where they live a central part of their writing, but this is the first time I’ve put Bournemouth front and centre in a book. There are good creative reasons for writers doing this – knowing an area well makes it easier to give a book a sense of place and a stamp of authenticity – and good marketing ones as well – local bookshops know there’s a demand for books set in their location, and holidaying readers will often pick something that they hope will remind them of their holiday. In my case, Bournemouth was where I had the most understanding of a grassroots music scene, which was critical for piecing together Carl’s back story as well as his influence on Immy’s.

B is also for Belle and Sebastian, one of my favourite bands. Intelligent and lyrical, their music has the rare knack of always making me happy, even with their seemingly sadder songs. They don’t feature in Dead Man Singing because that book was set a few years before they were formed, and they didn’t appear in Foul and Fair because, well, there was no reason to have them in that book – it would have been shoehorning them in for the sake of it. This time around I didn’t specifically intend to include them, but then I realised that I had (possibly subconsciously) prepared a perfectly-shaped niche for a particular song of theirs to slot into. But you’ll have to wait for me to reach the letter F for me to expand on that.