Inspiration Behind The Little Book Cafe

Inspiration. It’s a funny thing. It comes in many forms. I’ve been inspired by conversations with friends, people watching and eavesdropping (got to be my favourite thing to do, preferably in a pavement café with a glass of wine in hand) snippets in the media, even dreams. Deadlines can prove to be very … erm … inspiring! Once, a character was formed by watching how a slender woman sat on a train, with her foot twisted around her other ankle.

The inspiration behind my latest book, The Little Book Café,  came from somewhere deep inside. In order to explain, I have to let you in on some family history.

I grew up in the 60s when no one in my industrial town in the midlands seemed to have a lot of money –  we certainly didn’t. However, Dad was a sales rep so had that thing of wonder – a company car! Once a year we’d undertake the epic, pre-motorway trip to Lyme Regis on England’s Dorset coast and stay in my aunt’s caravan.

For me, Lyme became somewhere special. For two weeks each summer my Dad would leave behind the stresses and strains of working life and become a hilarious prankster who did a mean Eric Morecambe impression. He loved churches, the older the better, and we’d traipse around after him while he extolled the virtues of Exeter Cathedral or Buckfast Abbey. Luckily, there was also time for rock-pooling, fossil hunting and sandcastles on the beach, the illicit thrill of a pub beer garden, ice-cream and, of course, fish and chips eaten straight from the paper. I remember them hot and vinegary and made all the more delicious by an appetite sharpened by sea air. The memories are lodged deep and held precious.

I’ve been lucky enough to travel widely – to just post-Glasnost USSR, to Asia, the States and Africa but I’ve never lost my love for Lyme Regis. I went to Wales for college, to London for work and back to the midlands. But I’d still holiday in Lyme and would fret if I couldn’t manage at least one visit a year.

Then life took off on one of those swerves which makes you gulp at its audacity. It sent me off in a completely different direction, physically and emotionally: I left my day job and began writing fiction full-time (and that’s another story). And, of course, I could work anywhere that had a laptop. A plot wormed its way into my consciousness that I could move south and live in the town I’d obsessed about from age five. In 2017 I moved to live by the sea in Lyme Regis (and that too, is a whole other story).

So, for the inspiration for the first two novels in the Berecombe series, Millie Vanilla’s Cupcake Café and The Little Book Café, I didn’t have to look very far. True, the fictional seaside town of Berecombe is in east Devon rather than Dorset but is firmly based on my beloved Lyme Regis. If you know the town, you’ll instantly recognise Berecombe’s promenade is actually Lyme’s Marine Parade, with its theatre at one end and harbour at the other and its steep main street winding its way inland.

So, why didn’t I use Lyme itself as the location for my rom-coms? Two reasons. Firstly, it stops people pointing out any inevitable mistakes. There’s nothing worse than getting an email which explains that no bus runs from Lyme Regis to Exeter when a crucial plot point hinges on it! More importantly, the wonderful thing about making up a town, quite apart from it being huge fun, is I can add things I need. An important scene needs a cosy restaurant? I can sneak one in behind the high street. A beautiful house needs to be set high up on a cliff top? I can put one there without danger of it disappearing into the sea – Lyme’s coast is notorious for land slips.

In Millie Vanilla’s Cupcake Café, Millie faces the ruin of her business when a multi-national moves into town. It’s a sort-of You’ve Got Mail kind of plot. I loved writing about her and the inhabitants of Berecombe so much that I couldn’t let go. I wanted to move her story on. In The Little Book Café, Millie buys up the derelict seaman’s chapel next to her café and converts it into a book shop. It brought in a whole load of new possibilities, storylines and characters while retaining lovely Berecombe as background. I can’t seem to shake off pensioner Biddy though. She’s one of the town’s greatest eccentrics and pops up again in the new book. If anything she’s even naughtier! I’ve got a horrible feeling the inspiration for her comes from deep within me – I aim to grow old as disgracefully as Biddy has. However, Elvis her hearing assistant dog, is based on a little black poodle I know.

By writing about a seaside town, I’m revisiting those childhood memories of idyllic holidays in Lyme Regis. And it’s wonderful to write about a seaside town throughout the seasons. When the sun is shining and the town is full of tourists, it’s a buzzing, busy place. But now I know it in winter too and I love it even more then – when damp sea fog seeps into the corners of the old harbour buildings and the yacht halyards clank mournfully in the breeze. When the sea is rough and there’s a bracing wind coming off the sea, I’m often alone on the beach with my dogs. It’s exhilarating for a while but then, with my face numbed by the chill, I need to retreat to a café just like Millie Vanilla’s for a special hot chocolate. Extra cream and marshmallows of course!

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Georgia Hill writes best-selling fiction – romcoms and historical – with romance at the heart and written with love. She lives near the sea with her two beloved spaniels, her husband (also beloved) and a ghost called Zoe. She loves the books of Jane Austen, elephants, Belgian chocolate and Strictly Come Dancing. She’s also a complete museum geek and finds inspiration in the folklore and history of the many places in which she’s lived. She’s worked in the theatre, for a charity and as a teacher and educational consultant before finally acknowledging that making up things was what she really wanted to do. She’s been happily creating believably flawed heroines, intriguing men and page-turning stories ever since.

Find out more about her on her website http://www.georgiahill.co.uk/

Follow her on Twitter https://twitter.com/georgiawrites

About THE LITTLE BOOK CAFE

A charming new series from the author of Millie Vanilla’s Cupcake Cafe

Tash, Emma and Amy couldn’t be more different.

A successful estate agent who has her life pretty much on track, Tash has ticked all the boxes. Hasn’t she?

Emma is a budding writer who yearns to flex her writing skills and shake up her life that has become, well, a little stale…

And then there’s Amy, the manager of The Little Book Café, a hopeless romantic who had her heart broken, but quietly refuses to give up on love.

Brought together by their love of books and delicious cake from the café next door, they are in for a year of romance, crime and classic novels that will help them get through all that life will throw at them…

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Category: Contemporary Women Writers, How To and Tips