Links Between My Books

Have you picked up on any of the links between my books? I love adding a character from one book to another story and every one of my books is linked to at least one other book.

Take The Surplus Girls, for instance.

Mary, who was the heroine in The Poor Relation, appears in The Surplus Girls in the scene where Prudence has arranged for members of the press to visit Wilton Close to find out about the new business school she and Patience have set up.   (Incidentally, Mary is also mentioned in another book. Do you know which one?)

And William from The Sewing Room Girl also features in The Surplus Girls in his professional capacity as a senior clerk in the firm of solicitors in which readers will first have met him when he was a junior clerk.

There are other links with The Surplus Girls, which you may have spotted, but there is also a link that you won't know about. 

If you have read The Surplus Girls, you may remember Miss Kirby - Belinda's old schoolteacher, who tells her about surplus girls and encourages her to join the business school and train to be an office worker. Well, Miss Kirby originally appeared in the first draft of A Respectable Woman. There, she met Nell in the marketplace, helped her choose some fabric and reminded her that she had been a bright girl at school. In doing so, she created a spark in Nell that later led to her ambition to work for herself.

Unfortunately, the original version of A Respectable Woman was too long and I had to cut it down . . . and Miss Kirby was removed, though I was sorry to see her go because I liked her. Which was why it was a pleasure to find her a new home in The Surplus Girls, where she fitted in very naturally as someone who encouraged Belinda and made a difference to her life.

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Links to books in this blog:

The Surplus Girls 

A Respectable Woman  

The Poor Relation  

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The Sewing Room Girl