"Are you sure it's a parrot? It smells very fishy," asked her mother.

Although my stories are always ‘given to me’, the location settings come from real places I’ve been to. A Parrot called Theodore was no exception. 

I was only in Dartmouth for a few hours, but I felt a strong affinity with the town.  This might have been because part of my family comes from Devon, in fact, my 7th great-grandmother Bradford and my 7th great-grandfather Northam were born near Exeter in the 1690s. 

Yes, going to Devon always feels like I’m coming home.  Sitting on the quay, watching the ferry go back and forth between Dartmouth and Kingswear, I wondered how many of my ancestors had done the same. Obviously, in their time the quay would have been full of tall ships getting ready for their voyages around the world. 

As I looked around that afternoon, one house caught my eye, with its enormous wisteria climbing up over the small first-floor balcony.  “What a wonderful house for a child to grow up in, and what adventures they would have,” I thought.  From those moments the story of Amélia and her Parrot formulated in my mind.

Dartmouth is such a wonderful place for a writer to just sit and dream a story.