SAMHAIN: The time of year when the harvest has been completed and the earth has become dormant. The time when the veil which separates the living and the dead is at its most delicate. The time to honour those who have passed.

I feel as though I’m chewing on metal. You see I’ve just bitten the largest bullet an author can bite – I’ve sent my completed manuscript to my publisher. I finished writing and editing it months ago, but it was still really hard to let it go.

So what, you may ask, has that got to do with the pagan festival of Samhain? Well everything and nothing really. The timing of my baby leaving the comfort of my laptop was driven by the necessities of publishing schedules but sometimes, when you look higher, wider, around you – there is an underlying connectivity which at once astounds and makes perfect sense.

The Faerie Tree is not a novel about paganism, but simply a story where one of the major characters has chosen this path to make sense of his world. What it is, is a novel about loss. That sad universal truth of life we all have to battle with from time to time; finding a way to understand and move on, without ever forgetting.

Samhain is a time of remembrance. The pagan equivalent of the Christian All Souls, it is one of a number of major festivals which run in parallel across the boundaries of faith. It is so very human to want to reach out beyond the grave that it makes perfect sense to set aside a time to honour our loved ones on the other side.

Those of you who are familiar with my first novel, The Cheesemaker’s House, will naturally be thinking that The Faerie Tree sounds like another ghost story. It isn’t. Here the characters who have died live only through the memories of those who loved them.

Memory – or memories – are central to the book. So much will become clear as I take you through my journey from the manuscript being sent to my chosen publisher Matador, to the book being available in the shops. But first I think we need to go back in time so I can share the book’s story so far. I think you might be interested; where inspiration comes from is the question I am most often asked in interviews or when talking to groups of readers.

Every author is different, but for me a novel becomes worth writing when two ideas coalesce to make a really gripping story. The first concept was the fairy tree itself. A few years ago a friend took me walking in a beautiful piece of woodland next to the river Hamble, with the express purpose of showing me this tree.

As we approached we began to find tiny teddy bears and plastic toys perched in the bushes, but even their increasing numbers did nothing to prepare me for the tree itself. An oak; not gnarled and twisted, but young, straight and strong – covered with toys, ribbons, beads, strings of shells, and even an old cuckoo clock. But best of all was the box filled with letters from children to the fairies – and the plastic folder on the back of the tree which contained the fairies’ replies.

Never before – or since – have I wanted to hug a tree so much. The feeling was pure instinct – something really basic inside me. As was the covering of the tree with offerings. Pagan? Yes – but in a way few of those who had left their gifts would even recognise as such.

So the fairy tree was the first strand of inspiration, but what of the characters who would discover it for themselves? The previous winter I had visited the beautiful city of Winchester for its Christmas market, and seeing homeless men gather at the Buttercross in the main shopping street, I began to wonder what it would be like to look into the eyes of one of them and realise they were an old flame. And that, dear reader, is where Robin and Izzie’s story starts. The themes of memory and of loss, well, they rather wove themselves, because The Faerie Tree had to be more than just a romance – there had to be mystery, and suspense.

So here I am, with a manuscript winging its way through the ether to my publisher. But the hard work of getting it into readers’ hands isn’t over – it’s only just started. As you will begin to realise when we meet again at Yule.

Jane Cable