When I started ‘Telling the Sea’, I was meant to be writing another book, but this one came along instead.  Writing it was one of my happiest experiences as an author. Perhaps that’s because its location - Dinas Common, Pembrokeshire - is one of my favourite places.  So much of what I wrote is there just as I describe it.  The cottage where Nona and her family struggled to hide from Uncle Brady and make themselves new lives is there, if you only know where to look. And some of the stories of what happens to them have their roots in true events - like the mysterious camper on the common, and the rabbit-gutting incident, which happened in real life - and I’ve still got the rabbit skin to prove it.  And, most of all, the sea is there, just as I wrote about it, setting the same traps for me that it set for Nona, every time I go down.