Interview with an author: Heidi Swain, Part Two

I had the pleasure of interviewing Heidi Swain, a quintessentially British romance author, and we spoke about all things writing and books.

If you visited my blog yesterday, you'll know that I interviewed Heidi Swain. It was such a pleasure interviewing Heidi and I'm very grateful for the opportunity.

However, because we had so much fun talking about books, the interview required two blog posts. You can read the first part here if you missed it, but to read part two of my interview with Heidi, simply carry on scrolling.

My Interview with Heidi Swain, Part Two

WriteWatchWork: You have a lot of characters across all of your books, but they're all very different. Is there one that resonates with you the most?

Heidi: All the main characters, they’ve all got something I would love to have, or, and I’m not just talking about their fellas, but something I wish I could do. I think on a certain level they all resonate in one way or another.

One of my favourite characters is Jemma, who owns The Cherry Tree Café because she’s never had a book of her own but she’s got her life sorted. She’s pretty set, so she has an influence in other people’s stories rather than a book about herself, but I don’t think there’s one more than any other who I can relate to. But I guess the one I’ve always just written or am writing, will always be the one I’m thinking about the most.

At the moment, it’s Bella from Home for Christmas, which is the Wynbridge Christmas book this year and Bella is just, she’s such a Pollyanna. She is just adorable. I love her and I gave her the hair that I would like, a job that I would love and a dog I would love to have, so I think I’m in love with everything that character has and is, then that helps with the writing because you can put your enthusiasm for that character in.

WriteWatchWork: Alternatively, have there been any characters you've not enjoyed writing about?

Heidi: Protagonist, no. I have to really like them because I’ve got to spend 100,000 words with them and I want my readers to like them. But there are a couple of guys, where I’m like, I do not like you, so in Snowflakes and Cinnamon Swirls, Hayley is almost engaged to somebody who I didn’t like and there have been a couple of guys who just aren’t very nice and a bit gaslighty.

Snowflakes and Cinnamon Swirls at The Winder Wonderland, 5th Anniversary post. (Credit: @heidi_swain on Instagram)

It’s characters like that and it’s a good thing because if I’m not liking them, I don’t want their behaviour to be so bad that it’s triggering for people who have had negative experiences in life, but I want there to be enough in there for you to really not like that character at all.

I do tend to find if it’s a female character who’s a bit of a ratbag, they do tend to get a bit of redemption, but a few of the guys get binned off. There is no redemption for them whatsoever. It’s getting that level right, but a few of the guys I haven’t liked, but I might have enjoyed writing them because I can give them their comeuppance to a certain extent.

WriteWatchWork: A lot of your characters and worlds cross over, especially in your series, so how do you keep track of them all?

Heidi: Do you know what, because I’ve lived with them for so long, they are genuinely like real places to me. If I walked into Nightingale Square, I know who lives in each of the houses and everything about them, and it’s the same with Wynbridge as well.

I’ve just got so used to carrying them in my head, they almost feel like friends and family really and the settings could be real places that I go and visit. But I do love putting somebody in a different book, I really enjoy that, especially when readers pick up on it. I like to make sure there’s enough information in each one in case someone new comes across the book, they can just pick it up and read it and not think, I don’t understand.

I think because it’s a different main character, that helps with that. I had Catherine Connelly turn up at Wynter’s Trees in Underneath the Christmas Tree. You didn’t have to know who she was because I think that scene was where she loses her purse and somebody brings it back for her, but if you’re a fan of the books, you know who that is and then I start getting the messages, ‘Oh I spotted…’.

WriteWatchWork: I remember that scene and I think it helps readers feel like part of the community too.

Heidi: I’m pleased you like that. There have been a few characters I’ve sent off to Wynmouth for weekends too, I think in That Festive Feeling they went off there in the horsebox, they had a bit of time in Wynmouth. Scoop for you, Wynmouth gets a mention in the Christmas book as well, so a few little threads there.

WriteWatchWork: You spoke a bit about The Cherry Tree Café, your first novel, earlier, but what was the inspiration behind that?

Heidi: I think I wanted to write about things I loved because it was the first book, so I wanted to be able to put sort of my passions into it and that combination of baking and sewing, I love both of those things, but I’m pretty damn rubbish at them, but I’m always prepared to have a go.

The Cherry Tree Café was just somewhere I would love to be able to go and I didn’t want to pick something that other people weren’t writing about. There were quite a few café books coming out at the time and I thought I know that those books sell and I want to have a try at writing something commercial, but how can I give it a bit of a twist? So rather than just writing about the café, I decided to bring Lizzie home to Wynbridge, and she’s got the sewing and crafting side and put the two together, so that’s where it came from really.

WriteWatchWork: I love that, putting things you really want in books. But my next question is which book was the easiest to write?

Heidi: Gosh, I need to turn around and have a look at my shelves. I don’t think any have been easy, but I think I have enjoyed writing some more than others.

I very much just enjoyed writing Home for Christmas actually. I've literally just sent the copy edit back and that book has been a joy to write at every stage. The words poured out and there was practically nothing to change! I think it could be my favourite.

Home for Christmas, Heidi Swain's 19th book. (Credit: @heidi_swain on Instagram)

But I do have a post-it that was written on the 6th of February 2022 and it says:

"Draft one is a muddle, a mess and a total nightmare to write. This note is a reminder for next time around when I have forgotten the pains of labour."

I think I always get to a point where I hate it, I can’t do it, it’s rubbish, I don’t want to keep going, and I thought, 'Well if I was doing it in 2022, right at the beginning of that year, and I got through it and the book’s here on the shelf, it’s going to be alright.'

Some are hard, some are easier. It can depend on what I’ve got going on in my life because you know real life doesn’t stop and you’re trying to write through that, so that can have an influence on how much you’re enjoying the writing. Although saying that, more often than not when I sit down and start I’m in it, but you’ve still got all that chaos. That was a very long answer to a very simple question.

WriteWatchWork: Well, my next question is which book was the most challenging?

Heidi: The Holiday Escape was a difficult write. Very sadly my step-mum died at the very beginning of February; that had a big impact on that write, it made it a difficult write because it was very stop-start because I was travelling to see her and thinking about that a lot. That was external circumstances that made that a difficult book to write.

Another tricky one was The Christmas Wish List, which is a book that I love and I enjoyed writing the book but the story behind that was I had an impacted wisdom tooth removed and a few months later, the dentist realised they’d removed the wrong tooth because it wasn’t healing and there was a lot of pain. I love that book, I love that story and I love the characters, but I associate it with a lot of dental drama so that pain made that tricky to sit there and write every day.

I think that’s about it and it’s because of this post-it. It is like giving birth, you forget the pain in between doing it. I like to get all my planning sorted and feel organised before I start and then it’s generally, I think the most difficult part comes during the planning process when I’m trying to get it all straight in my head.

What I would love to do is be able to shut myself away for 10 or 12 weeks, depending on how long it’ll take me to get those words down and not have anything else going on. Send the cat off to boarding school. No weather, no garden, no shopping, no car dilemmas, nothing to deal with. I could just sit here and write it. That would be grand but it’s not life.

WriteWatchWork: Planning is incredibly useful but it can be difficult to get everything down as a plan and set up the entire story before you actually write.

Heidi: You will find as you start writing and get to know the characters, things will change. My advice would be to go with that. Don’t worry. If you know where you’re starting and you know where you’re ending, if a few bits change in the middle, it’ll be for the better because you’ve realised that’s what works for the characters.

I know that quite often, I go back and change things my characters said or did because by the time I’ve got to the end, I know them well enough to know that that might not have been their reaction, so I can go back and tweak that. Sometimes my editor and agent will get the book and say, I don’t remember this in the planning meeting, but I like it, we’ll keep it in, but I don’t remember that being in there.

WriteWatchWork: You write a mixture of Christmas and Summer books. Is there a season you prefer writing over the other?

Heidi: I think I prefer writing Christmas because I don’t do heat. If that gets to 23 out there, I’m in with the curtains shut. I don’t do hot weather, which is why I’ve never set a book abroad in the summer because I don’t go abroad in the summer. I’m not a fan of the heat.

I like the long light days, that I do enjoy, so I think because of my preference for the season, that’s why I prefer writing Christmas books. And I’m mad about Christmas, it’s that mid-winter celebration where it’s dark and dismal outside. I celebrate Solstice, so being able to write in Solstice celebrations is a real luxury, so I enjoy all of that.

Heidi Swain's Christmas Books. (Credit: @heidi_swain on Instagram)

So I guess they’re the books I enjoy writing the most and that’s probably why because of how I feel about the weather and things. For the community garden, I wouldn’t have been able to create that at Christmas, so Nightingale Square books, summer books, would have had a completely different vibe, where all the characters come together, you needed that beautiful community garden. Who wouldn’t want that community garden?

I would love to write an autumn book, I would love to write a pumpkin patch book is what I call it. I would love to write about a pumpkin patch farm, and it’d be very Halloweeny. But it doesn’t work with the publishing schedule, unfortunately, so I do get Halloween in – a lot of the Christmas books start at the end of October or the start of November – but I would love a full story.

WriteWatchWork: A lot of your books have specialised knowledge within them, such as the plants involved in The Grow Well Garden. What sort of things do you research for a book and how long does the research take?

Heidi: Well, I used to be a gardener, so that helps. I don’t think it’s necessary to write what you know especially with the research options that we have available now. But I do enjoy writing about things that I know and things that I’ve got experience of because then you can bring an extra layer.

In A Taste of Home for example, which is set in the Wynbridge countryside, that’s based around a fruit farm, a strawberry farm, and I spent my childhood summers picking strawberries with my grandad. There was a lot of my own experience put in there.

If it’s something that I really don’t know anything about, I would do a lot of research to cover it. I don’t just want to do online research, I want to find somebody who either does that job or used to do that job or has a family business involved with that job so you can get first-hand experience. That is important to me.

Heidi's strawberry plant in a raised bed. (Credit: @heidi_swain on Instagram)

I think especially with the Grow Well garden, that was me banging my drum a bit because if you follow me on Instagram, you know I use the hashtag #GreenThingsGrowing and especially during Covid, I just wanted to keep pushing people to get outside for a little while. I’m somebody who couldn’t go two days without a walk and to get out there.

I like to put things in there that I think are really important and I do like to put things in there that address mental health issues like getting outside and we have Beth with her houseplants because she didn’t have a garden for a while. The books are an opportunity to put these ideas in people’s heads and hope they will act on them.

WriteWatchWork: That's great because your books inspire you to get outside and explore nature a bit more, providing another purpose for reading other than escapism.

How do you come up with the names for characters and locations, such as Prosperous Place and Wynthorpe Hall?

Heidi: It’s hard. I spend a lot of time on that. I’m always writing names down. The book I’m planning that I’ll start writing in a couple of weeks, which will be next summer’s book, all the characters are named but I know the main character’s name is wrong. I’m not happy with it.

I think I have got the right name now so I’m going to go through my planning; I haven’t printed it out yet and I think that could have been why because I knew I would want to change that. But I spend a lot of time looking at baby name sites. They’re brilliant but I do try and be careful because if you’ve got an older character, they wouldn’t have a name that’s popular in the 2023 birth naming lists. So be mindful of that. A really really good thing that I have found is film credits.

Film credits are brilliant for finding names, so I sit there with either my phone out or a pen and paper if anything comes up. Place names, with Wynbridge, I don’t know where Wyn came from, but you’ve got the River Wyn that runs through the town, the town had a bridge over it, so Wynbridge. That was fine. Wynmouth, the River Wyn runs down to the sea, and I was thinking of Great Yarmouth, and it was like the mouth of the river so Wynmouth, that worked. No idea where Nightingale Square came from. No idea.

I think the thing to do is just sit with it. I write down every idea that I have and every combination of ideas that I have and quite often there’ll be one that stinks and one that works. That’s the key to it I think, just keep writing it all down.

When I do my planning, in an A4 crappy notebook – not my nice notebook, that comes for when I’m writing the first draft – I write in pencil and on A4 paper because if I’m writing in my notebook, I  like to be quite neat and tidy, but if you’ve got an A4 pad, it’s a mess but it doesn’t matter that it’s a mess because it’s just an A4 notepad that you can rip out and shred.

I find that really helps because that frees me up as I’m not thinking, 'I’ve got to get it right because it's a nice notebook and I don’t want to mess it up.'

WriteWatchWork: The Holiday Escape is set on the Dorset coast in Kittiwake Cove. What made you write a book set in Dorset?

Heidi: It comes back to personal experience. The Book Lovers' Retreat was set in the Lake District because that’s somewhere I used to visit as a child on holiday and loved.

I went to Dorset because I lived there for a while. My now ex-husband had a gardening job there; it was the summer that we married and he was a National Trust gardener, so in fact the first week he was working, we lived in a tent because they didn’t have anything for us to live in. Then we moved into Kingston Lacy House, which was the actual period property where the gardens were and they still didn’t have a cottage for us on the estate, so they put us in the staff accommodation.

Kingston Lacy House. (Credit: dorsetguide.com)

We were in Dorset for three years maybe and it was just beautiful. That part of the world was stunning and we were near the coast, so it was another place in my head that I knew well, that I could write about without having to visit because I’d lived there, I’d been immersed in that life, so that was why I picked Dorset. I just thought it was a beautiful place to set a standalone.

WriteWatchWork: Your books tend to focus more on the heroines but do feature romance, so which hero is your favourite?

Heidi: Blimey! I’m always going to say the most recent one, but I have a real fondness of Gabe, who’s Hayley’s partner at Wynthorpe Hall. Some of that is because he’s got Bran, the Irish Wolf Hound and I would adore that dog, I have put him in more than one book. I’ve given him more than one role in a couple of books because I love the dog.

So Gabe is a favourite. I loved Beamish as well actually in The Christmas Wish List. Bear, oh my God, Bear. It’s impossible. Whereas I write the ladies as women that I perhaps aspire to be, doing things I love, the guys are all blokes I wouldn’t mind being with I suppose. Love them all.

WriteWatchWork: And finally, what piece of advice would you give to aspiring authors?

Heidi: Get on and do it. Literally, as simple as that. Get on and do it. If you are scared of doing it, just remember that the first thing you are doing, you are doing for yourself. Don’t worry about if an editor going to like this, if a reader likes it, write it for yourself.

When you are first starting out, you are learning your craft. We never stop learning, I’m still learning now. It’s just really important to be open to learning and don’t assume you know it all. But when you are first starting out, be aware that it’s for your eyes only and just get on with it. Don’t put it off. Don’t wait for the perfect time or until you’ve got more time because you will never have more time, you have to find a way of making that work for you.

Until next time...