Vanessa Wiggins

'The Colour of Secrets' is my first novel. It's not the novel I thought I'd write; it's probably not even the novel I should have written. But it's the best sort of novel - the one that did actually get written. And the one that, I'm delighted to say, is now published.

I live in England and grew up in west London, in an area of mock Tudor houses and tree-lined streets, but I'd always loved the countryside that we visited on Sunday afternoon trips. And that's where I live now - in a small village in a rural county of hills and vale and rolling farmland. It was only a few years ago that I learned that where I now live is also where generations of my family came from - a curious kind of full circle.

Home is a hilltop village in the Vale of Aylesbury, and it's this area that's also the location for 'The Colour of Secrets'. My novel is set during the years of my earliest memories of this area, during the 1950s and 60s; a nostalgic and bitter-sweet recollection of a world that's now disappeared.

None of the people in my novel are real, and neither are any of the situations, although it began as a short writing exercise, based on my father's stories that he, as a young lad from urban London, was often sent to stay in the country during the summer holidays. He never knew why, although fortunately lived long enough for me to discover our family link and tell him.

So, on to the next story ... I'm researching, and beginning to write again.