Writers are inspired by many different things but for me it always starts with a place. A little over two years ago I found myself in the middle of the steam punk festival in Lincoln. People in amazing costumes were everywhere, breathing life into the city’s cobbled climbs and quirky coffee shops. It felt as though I had walked into the beginning of a novel and very quickly I realised that I had. It was just down to me to write it.

Last week I went back. The latest round of editing is almost complete – it won’t be the last, but I’m finally satisfied that the manuscript is almost in good enough shape to be found a home. I have a couple of agents in my sights and a shortlist of three publishers who take direct submissions and whose criteria it fits. This time I’m going to be very careful.

The story has two main locations, the city of Lincoln itself and the picturesque village of Winteringham on the banks of the Humber. I construct the settings for my stories very carefully; I know where the characters’ houses, flats – and barges – are; the places they work; the bars and restaurants they frequent and where my heroine Rachel goes running. In my own mind I create details so rich I inhabit the settings myself – so it comes as something of a shock when they are not quite as I remembered.

Much of the Lincoln part of the story takes place along the Fossdyke Navigation which joins the heart of the city to the River Trent. I think I surprised my husband by saying, “That’s Rachel’s flat” – and surprised myself by having forgotten it has a balcony overlooking the canal. But the story doesn’t need a balcony so I won’t be adding one. The apartment in my mind is so very real it would feel uncomfortable anyway.

I don’t think this is especially strange or odd – no more than is normal for writers anyway. The best of fiction is so much about the richness of the characters, to create them I think you need to actually walk in their footsteps, inhabit their world. For me, once I’ve grounded them in a physical setting, everything else falls into place. I am completely in awe of authors who can imagine and populate whole new worlds.

But I’m having to accept that my memory is far from perfect. I needed a male character who was a without doubt a local man so I picked an unusual surname from Winteringham’s war memorial. On a return visit to the museum in Lincoln I thought it such a co-incidence a Daubney was quoted on one of the display panels. When we arrived in Winteringham, the name wasn’t on the memorial at all. I read it three or four times with growing disbelief. Was another of my characters, the enigmatic Nick, up to his tricks again?

It seems so… either that or subliminal recall is far stronger than we think. I needed to name one of the properties close to the village centre. Not anything too twee, but something comfortingly rural, so I decided on Bramble Cottage. This visit I noticed that the alleyway running up the side of the houses is called Bramble Lane. I leave you to draw your own conclusions.