What I learnt while writing my latest book

What did I learn while writing Oh Crumbs?

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One of the unexpected pleasures of writing a book is the research. In my other life as a medical writer, I’m used to trawling the internet for information on the diseases or medicines I’m working on, so research itself isn’t new for me. Research on biscuits though, that’s far more interesting.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. When I started writing Oh Crumbs, I knew I wanted my hero, Doug, to be a managing director of a company and my heroine, Abby, to be his PA (well, at least in the beginning, though things change…). What type of company, though? I considered a variety of options: clothes, watches, electrical goods, sportswear, furniture. Did I really want to research TV sets and dining room tables? I mulled it over as I went to make myself a mug of tea (essential writing tool) and grabbed a biscuit.

Bingo!

So what did I learn about the biscuit market?

I was intrigued to discover that the younger generation (16-24 year olds) prefer the traditional biscuits over the fancy new ones; custard creams, bourbons, malted milk. That this high tech, modern generation preferred the old fashioned when it came to their biscuits tickled me so much, it had to appear in the book. When it comes to dunking biscuits though, it seems the youngsters aren’t that keen, so it’s up to people of my generation (the over 45s – and no, I’m not being economical with the truth here, that was the age group in the research, honest) to keep that fabulous tradition alive. Rest assured, I’m doing my bit.

Happy dunking!

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PS It wasn’t only biscuits I had to research. Next week I’ll be talking about BJJ….a sport I’d never heard of until I started writing Oh Crumbs.

 

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