October | 2023 | jenjsilver

Some words about my two October releases…my first published novel and my twelfth (I don’t want to say ‘my last’ as I hope I still have another book or two inside me). This is my muse, Colin the Chameleon. He sits on top of a cabinet looking down at my computer screen. I think he’s hibernating at the moment as not many words are reaching the blank page. But I’m thankful for the ones that have emerged to produce books 1 through 12.

Starting Over will always have a special place in my heart. I started writing it during the summer of 2013. Newly retired, with more time on my hands, it was the ideal opportunity to fulfil a lifelong ambition to be a published author. Sitting in my garden writing random thoughts in a notebook about characters’ names, ages, occupations, I somehow knew that one of the MCs was a potter. This led me to researching pottery online. I came across a pottery place in Bardon Mill, Northumberland. This led me to check out Vindolanda. I discovered that I could volunteer to excavate at this Roman site near Hadrian’s wall. The story started to take off after that and I knew that archaeology would have a large part to play in the storyline.

Changing Times developed in a very different way. I already had a cast of characters from Changing Perspectives (story set in 1993, published in 2017). But the main characters would now be of retirement age. So, although I wanted to revisit them, the focus of the narrative for this book was on the younger generation. Setting the story thirty years on meant that Dani’s nieces were now in their thirties. My task then was to find out what Lucy and Holly were up to. They inhabit a world that has changed somewhat since 1993 and I tried to express the impact on them through their different life experiences.