One of my favourite parts of writing a new novel is finding the places where my characters are going to live, work, hide, spy — and, occasionally, do things they really shouldn’t.
And with The Jealous Girl, I had the perfect excuse to spend rather a lot of time exploring Dorset.
It’s a hard life being an author…
Set around Swanage, Corfe Castle and the surrounding countryside, The Jealous Girl follows Kirsty, a woman who hasn’t just lost the man she loves. When she and Ryan break up, she loses the future she thought they were going to have too.
And Kirsty isn’t quite ready to let go.
A room with a view… in Swanage
Swanage became an important part of Kirsty’s world, and while I was exploring the town I started looking at it through her eyes.
Where would she live? Where would she work? What would she see when she looked out of her window?
This view across Swanage Pier is very close to the view I imagined from Kirsty’s apartment.
It’s beautiful, peaceful and wonderfully open — although, as readers of psychological thrillers will know, appearances can be deceptive.
One of the things I love about using real locations is taking somewhere idyllic and asking a rather different question:
What might happen here when nobody else is looking?
Searching for hiding places at Corfe Castle
Corfe Castle was somewhere I knew I wanted to use from the beginning.
There is something wonderfully dramatic about the ruins. They’re beautiful, but they’re also full of shadowy corners, broken walls, unexpected viewpoints and places where someone could disappear from sight.
Which, naturally, meant I spent my visit hunting for hiding places.
All perfectly normal author behaviour.
One of the key scenes in The Jealous Girl takes place at Corfe Castle, so I needed to understand how my character could move around the ruins, what she might be able to see — and, more importantly, where she could hide while witnessing something she was never supposed to see.
Then I found this.
I won’t tell you exactly what Kirsty sees from her hiding place.
You’ll have to read the book for that.
But this little corner of the ruins immediately made me think: yes. This is where she would hide.
There’s something particularly satisfying about finding the real-life spot that suddenly makes a scene in your imagination click into place.
Following in my characters’ footsteps
Of course, location research isn’t all skulking around castle ruins looking suspicious.
Sometimes your character needs a day out.
Which means the author needs one too.
This boardwalk provided the setting for one of Kirsty’s trips, so naturally it required some very serious research involving walking, exploring and enjoying a beautiful afternoon at Brownsea Island.
I suffer for my art.
What I particularly love about this part of Dorset is the contrast between the coast, the countryside and the historic villages. Within a relatively small area, the atmosphere can change completely — which gave me lots of possibilities when I was deciding where different scenes should take place.
We spent a full day travelling around Swanage, Corfe and the surrounding area, looking at everything from cliffside locations to quiet roads, homes and viewpoints that could become part of Kirsty’s story.
The inspiration for Blackwater Stables
At the heart of The Jealous Girl is Blackwater Stables, owned by Ryan’s family.
The stables themselves are fictional, but this part of Dorset provided exactly the landscape I had imagined for them.
Rolling fields. Country lanes. Horses. Stables tucked away across the countryside.
And viewpoints.
Lots of viewpoints.
Because when you’re writing about a woman who is becoming rather too interested in the life her ex-boyfriend is living without her, being able to see without necessarily being seen becomes quite important.
This landscape helped inspire some of those scenes — particularly the idea of looking down towards the stables from higher ground.
I’ll leave you to decide what Kirsty might be doing up there.
Turning real places into fiction
One of the things I love about setting my books in real locations is that Kirsty gets to experience many of these places just as I did. She walks through Corfe Castle, visits Brownsea Island and looks out across Swanage — so perhaps she is walking in my footsteps, or I’m walking in hers!
Alongside the real locations, I create fictional ones where the story needs them. Blackwater Stables, for example, exists only in the world of The Jealous Girl, but the beautiful Dorset countryside around it is very real.
It’s that mixture I love — taking places I’ve walked through and views I’ve stopped to admire, then wondering what might happen there if I handed them over to one of my characters.
And, this being a psychological thriller, the answer isn’t always particularly pleasant…
I hope that when you read The Jealous Girl, you’ll recognise some of these places — and perhaps see them just a little differently afterwards.
The Jealous Girl is published on 10th September and is available to pre-order now.
How far would you go to get revenge on the woman who stole your life?
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