Recently, I was interested to read an article in the Guardian on the subject of settings for books by the very popular novelist David Nichols (author of One Day, which just about broke my heart!). In ‘Google v old-fashioned legwork – how to research a novel’, David writes candidly about his own journey as a writer in deciding how exactly to research locations for his novel.

He describes travelling to a seaside town while writing his first novel, walking the streets, taking notes and taking ‘a great many photographs of quite staggering dullness’, and then discovering that ‘Little of that research found its way on to the page directly’. In contrast, he explains that for his recent novel he crafted a quick description of Bologna railway station simply by using the internet to find pictures of the locality. ‘It’s certainly less costly and time-consuming than visiting Bologna,’ he writes, ‘but it still feels a little like cheating. What if I’ve missed something? Isn’t being there part of the job?’

The point, I think, is in that word ‘quick’ – the character was merely passing through the station, and very little description was required. Still, I understand David’s feeling of unease. Read any of his books and you’ll see that he is a master of paying attention to detail: every word is so carefully considered and perfect for the meaning and mood. This is how I endeavour to write as well, and when it comes to researching a location, I am very thorough ­– to the point that I end up with reams of notes that never find their way into my books.

David writes about ‘the author’s anxiety about getting it horribly wrong’. I suffer horribly from this! I want my love stories to be as realistic as possible, and I would be most upset to find I had made a mistake in describing a place. An easy option would be to create a fictional setting, where I would have free reign to describe as I liked. Stuart Kelly suggested reasons to use fictional settings in another recent Guardian article, entitled ‘Misplaced: why do novelists disguise real locations?’: to make places ‘exemplary, not individuated’; to allow freedom to toy with place names creatively (JK Rowling’s Little Whinging springs to mind); to preserve anonymity. As he points out, ‘Places that aren’t anywhere can be everywhere.’

I don’t fictionalise settings, because I want my novels to transport readers to real, exciting, interesting, romantic places. I want to offer my readers a chance to get to know other countries; perhaps even to inspire them to find out more or to visit. Most of all, I want my story to seem real, believable, so that the love story is powerful and moving ­– and I think that demands a tangible setting.

Another form of anxiety drives the writer in creating settings: that the reader will not be able to visualise the place. Just because I know what the famous and iconic Alcázar palace of Seville looks like, does not mean my reader does. And if I assume the reader knows that place, and just skip over describing it in the narrative, then I am doing my reader a disservice, and may make the reader feel ignorant and left out. So description is essential, and for me that means really knowing a place.

As David points out: ‘research is not just a matter of fact-checking. A novelist’s deep immersion in a place is often part of the appeal, the sense that not only were they there, but things happened to them.’ When you read a ‘Hannah Fielding’ novel, then, you are not only getting a story, but a little slice of my own experiences and perspectives. For example, take this excerpt from Indiscretion:

Alexandra moved briskly, head high, taking in the familiar scenes and smells of London in summertime. She missed the idiosyncrasies of the city: the market traders in Covent Garden shouting out cheerfully; the bustling curiosity of antique hunters in Portobello Road; picking up a bag of roasted chestnuts on Chelsea Embankment in winter; an ice-cream in Hyde Park on warm days; milkmen rattling down the backstreets early in the morning; the silhouette of the city’s skyline spiking into an orange ripple sunset as you walk over Albert Bridge. How very different to the things she had seen every day in Andalucia.

Here, I offer a little snapshot of London, and it’s one that I could not have offered had I only read some books on the city and looked up some pictures. I have stood in Covent Garden and listened to the calls of the traders; I have hunted down antiques in the Portobello Road stalls; I have eaten roasted chestnuts on Chelsea Embankment; I queued at a kiosk in Hyde Park for an ice-cream; I have awoken to the sound of the milkman’s float; I have watched the sun set from Albert Bridge. As a reader, I think you can tell that I have walked in my heroine’s shoes.

What it comes down to, I think, is building a contract of trust between writer and reader. When you read a book and you feel that the author knows the setting, that the author has done the hard work of describing accurately, then as a reader you trust the author as you read. From there, you can let go and feel. You escape into the story world, and are swept up in the mood of the book. When you finally put that book down and go about your usual daily routine, there is a sense of loss. You miss the people, you miss the place. But it is a loss you can easily carry, because you know that at any time you can pick up the book again and be back in that place.

As Stephen King put it: ‘Books: a uniquely portable magic.’