Friday Fun Facts - about book 3 from my Shetland series

1. As a teenager, I had a weekend waitressing job at a local hotel which saw me through high school and college. Friday night restaurant, weddings and Sunday lunch shifts paid for my first car.
2. I used to teach yoga.
3. As a child, our village had a mobile vegetable van which visited designated streets on a weekly basis. The memory inspired Pippa’s deliveries.
4. I visited Scalloway castle whilst in Shetland and spotted the Latin phrase on the lintel.
5. I spent a wonderful afternoon trekking with alpacas. One of my personal mottos in life is ‘Carpe Diem’ - pure coincidence, but that was my alpaca’s name!
6. As a teenager, our neighbour-over-the-road converted an old ambulance into a camper van.
7. Molly Badham, co-founder of Twycross Zoo, used to enjoy weekend stays at the hotel, accompanied in her room by a baby chimp and a parrot - delivering room service was an experience!
8. I hadn’t planned Natalia’s final scene, it just happened. I wrote it without knowing which song - bang on cue, my brain delivered the perfect choice. I love my brain!
9. In January 1985, my family spent a weekend break on a small cruise ship heading for Denmark. The stormy weather was so rough and the crossing took so long we only had enough time to disembark for a Macdonald’s in Esbjerg before returning!
10. I had a medical scare whilst writing this book. After lots of research, for my own benefit, I couldn’t ignore what I’d learnt about a specific condition, so returned to the beginning and rewrote a specific story line. Thankfully, my episode was eventually diagnosed as a strange migraine.

---