The inspiration for this book came while on holiday with a couple of good friends, as we chatted around the pool about how some people seem to carry the world on their shoulders. Thanks to Sarah Locker and Paul Dean, my co-conspirators in the development stages.
It"s never easy to create fictional characters when life is so full of lively and colourful people in the flesh. I"m forever meeting friends who relate funny family secrets to me or who have an idea for a crazy saga to feature in my work, but most of the time I simply create my imaginary town and slowly mould my characters one by one. It is the fictional people themselves who tell the secrets, sometimes they know what is beginning to unfold before I do, the sign that they have taken over and the book is no longer mine.
"The Congr
