Settings are so important to me – both the setting where I write, and the setting where my characters play out their story. I have always noted and appreciated the varied details of nature: the vivid violet of wisteria against an azure Mediterranean sky; the startlingly white snow blanketing our grounds in Kent in winter. And the weather – nature’s voice: the lazy, aphrodisiac heat of the late  afternoon sun; the cleansing downpour brightening the verdant greens of the garden; the almighty wind sending great trees dancing in rhythm to a whistling, blustering tune.

Weather sets mood, and in a novel weather can reflect mood (what we call pathetic fallacy). In Burning Embers, set in Kenya, heat dominates the story – the passion and attraction between the characters is reflected in the sultry setting. But one of my favourite chapters in the book is the one in which a storm breaks out. Astonished by the sudden onset of a torrential downpour, terrifying thunder and awesome blue bolts of lightning charging through the sky, Coral and Ralph take shelter in a cave. And there, they whip up a physical, intimate storm of their very own.

The next morning, the lovers awake to a calm sky lit by shimmering rainbow. But while Coral is delighted by the sight, Rafe is wary. For it is an incomplete rainbow, a partial arch, and according to an old African superstition, a small broken bow such as this indicates that enemies are coming…