There's an old saying about writing what you know. I thought I knew nothing. I thought I was a saga author writing as Jeannie Johnson. I use that name when writing my weekly column for the weekend magazine of the Western Daily Press.

I'm a great believer in fate, the paranormal and the fact that eating somebody else's chocolates is never going to make me fat. I can also get pretty immersed in nostalgia including my own life story. Some of it makes me sad, but a lot of it makes me laugh out loud or at least smile.

I was musing one day about the time I owned a hotel - or perhaps I should say a nine bedroom guest house - in Bath - a quirky time that deserved a quirky heroine, and Honey Driver was born.

Living in Fern Cottage Hotel was a mad time and some of that madness has rubbed off. I've bullet pointed these below.

• The old place had been in the same family since 1740.


• Some family ancestor didn't care for being disturbed by our renovations. He tramped the landings. Lampshades twirled, things got lost and turned up in odd places and children still laughed in the nursery.


• The lighting was gas, dated from the late nineteenth century and threw odd shadows along the landings and stairs.


• Being a strange place it attracted some strange people. Mary Jane, the professor of the paranormal from California, was based on one of them. She passed away some years ago, but I hope she's looking down from on high with a smile on her face especially if she reads the excerpt in Walking with Ghosts about the sage burning ritual. I also hope her pale pink 1961 Cadillac Coupe is still going strong.

Some of the guests were as wacky as the ghosts and from all over the world. So Honey Driver just popped into existence with a good deal of me and my experiences in her, though unlike Honey, I have never collected antique underwear!

However, just like Honey I did work for the probation service for a time, probing such mysteries as who stole my rubber plant and was the Senior Probation Officer likely to be back from lunch before four in the afternoon and reasonably sober.

Just as a little extra, I've done other things besides writing novels like scripting BBC New Writers Funny Five Minutes at Radio Bristol with Second Time Around, starring Stephanie Cole and June Barrie.