Serendipity Reviews: Secret Serendipity Seven with Keren David

To follow on from my review yesterday, I am really pleased to welcome Keren David onto the blog, to tell us seven things we might not know about her new YA novel, Salvage.

1) I lost my kindle and found a title. I got the idea for the title because I lost my kindle at Brent Cross shopping centre. It was found by someone called Anna, and her husband Russell and their son Michael looked at the books I had listed and worked out that something called Keren’s kindle with books listed by Keren David probably belonged to that person. They emailed me - I hadn’t even realised that I’d lost it - and I went round to their house the next day to pick it up. Russell told me about his shop, The Salvage Store in Burnt Oak, north London, and the notion of trading in goods which have been damaged or written off seemed to fit with the book and characters I had in mind.

2) I did my research on the football field. I was watching my son play football when one of the other mums said ‘I know what you should write about next, adopted kids whose birth parents trace them through Facebook’. Funnily enough I’d already thought of the same idea. She’s a social worker, working with families at all stages of adoption, and she gave me a lot of very helpful information and insights.

3) Will’s sister’s cats Lily and Barney belong to my agent. I feed them when she goes on holiday.

4) I had three characters called Matilda, completely accidentally. There was a relatively late Matilda cull.

5) Cass is probably the most frustrating character I’d ever written. I knew exactly what she’d do, but rarely why - probably because she is so lacking in self-knowledge. It was only towards the end of the book that I really understood her.

6) Large chunks of the book were written in Nando’s, Carlisle.

7) In an earlier version, Aidan has a reluctant affair with Clive’s daughter.