One of the questions I’m often asked is: do my characters derive wholly from my imagination, or are they based on people I know, or at least know of?  The answer, I suppose, is a little of both, and there are probably times when I borrow little quirks or sayings from real people without even realising.  Even so, I think it really is far more the former than the latter.

Some characters are wholly imagined.  For example, I don’t know anyone remotely like central figure Tina.  And actually when I first planned the Saltbury series, she was meant to be quite a minor presence.  Yet she grew to the point when she is actually the only person to appear in every book so far.  Not even my other principal, Hazel, has quite managed that.  Other major figures like Roisin, Annie, Katie, Rachel and Rosie are also purely imaginary.

I do know someone who looks a bit like I picture Haze, but any resemblance ends there.  Hazel’s mother, Martine, on the other hand is physically exactly a woman I was close to years ago when we were students, but who died tragically young.  Marty is thus a sort of tribute to her memory.  But she wasn’t Martine.  She wasn’t even called that.  She wasn’t half Spanish either and, unlike earth-mother Martine, she never lived to have children. One aspect of Martine is me, though. She is dyslexic and so am I.

Joseph Stewart, I’m afraid, is much more real. He’s an exaggerated version of my own late father: a terrifying Victorian martinet, shifted into the 1970s.  Tina’s ever-supportive Dad, Desmond Burns, on the other hand, borrows from a school friend’s father, who I adored as a child and used to wish was my Dad too, although he wasn’t a lawyer like Des.

I confess that two of the ‘Xeroed’ bandmates have names that give a small homage to two of my musical heroines.  But neither has any resemblance beyond the name.  Hazel’s (other) Mum, Debbie Stewart is named for Debbie Harry, while Stevie Hides pays tribute to Stevie Nicks.  But the three male band members have no real-world links that I’m aware of.

A few characters perhaps reflect a type, rather than an actual person.  We might think of Dennis, the stage door keeper, who is every officious minor functionary, abusing their little spark of power when they think they can get away with it.  Zara is the sexual predator.  Yvonne is the classic bully, at least at first.  Lia is the person whose internalised homophobia so terrifies her that she lashes out at others she thinks are gay, while Miss Stone (as Hazel says) is almost a caricature of the elderly, girls’ school headmistress (which is rather the joke).

Adam and Beth in ‘Martine’ are inspired by two archaeologist friends of mine, but are certainly not based on them or their real-life stories.  Carol Baxter has elements of quite a few great British sports-women, but is still very much her own person.  Dame Evadne has shades of a supremely aristocratic Scottish lady I used to know (now sadly long dead), while Carol and Tina’s cat, Leather, is pretty much every cat I’ve ever known.