As most people know (well, my Mum remembers, I think), I was born on 28th February 1953. An auspicious day, you must admit.

I was slightly miffed earlier this week, on popping into The Eagle pub in Cambridge, to see that a couple of guys called Watson and Crick have hijacked my birthday for their own ends. And collected Nobel prizes into the bargain. The Watson guy is still alive. I believe that I’ll be lodging a complaint with him.

It had been years now since he’d said a sweet word to her, or given her a cuddle, much less bought her flowers on her birthday. Barely a ‘hello’ as he came home from the office at the end of each day. Still, she believed it was her place, her duty to look after him – cook his meals, iron his shirts, keep a clean and tidy house.

‘There must be more,’ she often thought as they sat in silence each evening, watching television. He would frown in disapproval on the rare occasion that she’d go and see her friends, perhaps attend an evening lecture or even a performance of the local amateur dramatics society. He himself never went anywhere other than to and from work. Wouldn’t dream of accompanying her anywhere.

Yet he wasn’t cruel, didn’t mistreat her. Separation had never entered her head. But one evening, not feeling well, the pent-up frustration got the better of her. She shouted at him, cried, poured her heart out about her wasted life. He looked at her in astonishment, said not a word.

The next morning he packed a bag and was gone.

She was in despair, at her wit’s end. She was alone. No one even to watch television with. She burst into tears over a cup of tea with a friend. The friend suggested she join a club, a group, a society. So one day she steeled herself and presented herself, with tennis shoes and an old-fashioned tracksuit, at a beginners’ jogging group. There she quickly made new friends, lost a bit of weight. Her confidence growing, she changed her hairstyle, starting wearing make-up again, bought fashionable running gear and a Garmin watch.

A few months later, hardly believing herself, she lined up with hundreds of others at the start line of the local athletics club’s annual 10k road race. It wasn’t easy but she wasn’t last by any means. As she approached the last fifty yards, the crowds applauding the competitors, she couldn’t help but burst into tears. This time tears of joy. She had never known happiness like it, not since her wedding day.

And as she accepted her medal her vision was too blurred with tears to notice, arms aloft and receiving the cheers like a champion, her husband as he, too, trotted over the finishing line.

In my second novel ‘A Jersey Midsummer Tale’ the early scenes were of four young Jersey people meeting up on Midsummer Day 1935. Soon enough one of them – Tess Picot – was trying to tell me, convince me, to write her story. And so I did in ‘Tess of Portelet Manor’.

In ‘A West Cork Mystery’ a young, feisty barmaid in Darwin, Australia makes a brief appearance to help out one of the story’s leading characters. Later, Chantilly Taylor reappeared as the subject of a short story in my collection ‘Aspirations of a Sheep’.

Which leads me to the point of this post. Chantilly won’t let me go. I have explored her character, personality and appearance. She is pale, ash-blonde cut in a severe style, blue-eyed, straight-talking, gay or a-sexual, likes Goth music. But she is highly intelligent and, despite her background, has always wanted to study History at one of the Oxbridge colleges. Due to some good fortune she has managed to get a place a Magdalene, Cambridge.

Nothing to do with this post, but a nice view of Havre des Pas, Jersey from the old swimming pool.

Never having been to Cambridge I have researched the city, and Magdalene, in some depth. And I have written the first couple of introductory scenes. And I have no clue what comes next! I haven’t a plot, though I want it to be crime-based.

Which got me to thinking about the popular authors who have readers gasping for their next release. Lee Childe must always be thinking up new adventures for Jack Reacher. Tess Gerritson and her protagonist Jane Rizzoli, Rowling and Harry Potter, Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes. There are innumerable examples. What is their process for thinking up a new overarching plot?

It’s a new one on me but I’m going to have fun figuring it out. Meanwhile Chantilly is getting used to her new life as a fresher in Cambridge.

Thoughts?