On 29th March, I was giving a talk about my book, Dear Magpies, at the Blandford Literary Festival’s Day of Words. It took place in the Woodhouse Gardens Pavilion. My talk was entitled: From Dorset with Love, because the novel is an epistolary book, written mainly in the form of email letters from my protagonist, Josie, in Dorset to her two grandchildren who are on the other side of the world. This is the first of my books to be based in Dorset, and when writing it I drew on my experience of having lived in a rural village in the county for over 20 years.