In the old days, when I only dreamed of being a writer, I had a rather movie-centric view of the job. In my mind I would be forever in dusty libraries, looking up obscure references in ancient books. And yes, I’m not too proud to admit it, more often than not the librarian would be very pretty and sneaking me (in my tweed jacket with leather elbow patches) highly admiring glances. Though I would always be too absorbed in my work to take notice. The reality is somewhat different. I write fiction, so the only research I actually need to do is sneak a look at Google every now and then, perhaps to check how easy it is to kill someone using cyanide, or how to make a bomb (I dread to think how many terrorist watch lists I’m on since starting writing books). However, for my most recent novel The Glass Tower I was able to do some actual research. I wouldn’t say I particularly needed to, but I wanted to anyway.

The book was going to be set in Suffolk, on the East coast of England, and where I partly grew up. It’s a very rural part of the country and I’ve never particularly liked it, but it suited my main character, Julia – a middle-aged aspiring writer who lives in a little cottage with just her cat for company. She would claim she lives there for the creative freedom it affords her, but the real truth is she simply can’t afford to live anywhere else.

But then I realised that near where I actually live now would also be a suitable setting for such a character, and with a few tweaks to reality would be more than suitable. And this was a lovely discovery because it allowed me to write a story set in my favourite place. In the book this is called Hunsey Island, in real life it’s a place on the Dorset coast called Kimmeridge Bay.

You may well have heard of Kimmeridge, it’s world famous (and part of a World Heritage site) for its fossils, its ledges of sedimentary rock that stretch out into the sea like ancient pavements, and for its tower – a folly built in 1830 and the inspiration for Thomas Hardy, PD James and now, it seems, me.

Kimmeridge is also a special place in my old world, as a writer for a windsurfing magazine. On top of all the natural beauty of the land, the unusual rock formations of Kimmeridge Bay also shape and sculpt any swell coming this far up the English Channel into some of the best waves that this country gets.

I first came aged 16, the first place I ever drove to (with a friend, in my dad’s car). It was like a pilgrimage, and we thought we were incredibly brave for sailing ‘on the ledges’ (the waves were tiny) and we then camped in the old quarry, that also features in the book. Since then I’ve been back hundreds of times, to surf, to windsurf, to paddleboard, to canoe, or just to walk in the green rolling hills that surround the bay. I’ve seen it in raging storms when the sea is frothy white and huge waves close out the bay. I’ve seen it in the height of summer when the water is glass clear and you see the rock bottom twenty metres down. I’m looking now at a perfect ammonite I once found, and it’s sitting on bookshelves made from driftwood collected from the Kimmeridge rocks.

So I didn’t really need to go back to research Kimmeridge, but any excuse to do so was always going to be welcomed by me. And therefore, when writing The Glass Tower I made a special point of taking every opportunity to head over to K Bay. And once I got the bug of research, I also decided that – if I’m going to write a book about a glass tower – I should probably spend a bit of time around towers, and lighthouses, so my daughter and I went on a mission to climb Portland Bill lighthouse, and also the wonderful, nearly derelict and frankly rather scary (for those of us with a healthy fear of heights) Cranmore Tower.