I stood in Green Park wondering if I had lost my mind. There was no Little Pond Cottage. One of the most important locations in my novel had simply vanished.

This year I have found myself unexpectedly distressed as I have visited places from my book, either to take photos for the marketing or to explore and write features around the story. My distress came from the locations being out of line with the story I have written. It has forced me to explore my own memory and to understand where I get my locations from. I have edited Blood-stained Crown so many times, and this was not the moment  to pull it back from the printing process and change it again in an attempt to make it align with reality.

Let’s use Blood-stained Crown for example. Little Pond Cottage in Green Park was a key location, a place within George’s Nightmare. I have a vague recollection of this whimsical cottage, surrounded by wildflowers, the flowers so tall that they almost hide this quaint place. A home truly out of place in the city. It captured my imagination. There was a pond I remembered, but it was the house that held me. 

My memory placed it just north of Buckingham Palace (BP) in Green Park. So, imagine my surprise when I went up to take photos of BP and Little Pond Cottage and the cottage was nowhere to be found. I felt that uncomfortable mix of anxiety and mistrust in my own memory. As I walked, I had a talk with myself. I reminded myself that these places are in my imagination, perhaps based on something real but that wasn’t the most important factor, I was writing stories that had messages beyond the schematics of London. 

I’d felt it at Buckingham Palace too. The road was lined with trees; the expanse of greenery was not visible in the way that I’d written it. I had to reason with self, force myself not to crumble, to tell the publishers, it’s not ready and once again (15 years down the line) go back to the drawing board. 

“This is your story Heather,” a gentle voice – a kind one – creeps past the negativity and sidles up next to me. I take a breath. I take photos, grateful for the menacing sky, though it could be a little more menacing, a photo edit would be required. 

I can’t let go of the cottage though, there is something about it. I walk all around Green Park. At a park map I stop and notice that there are two parks. Green Park & St James’s Park. On the maps St James’s Park has a large lake and within this, Duck Island sits. Not a name that I recognise but it looks to have a house. I feel fresh excitement as I head into St James’s Park. 

Immediately the park felt familiar; I had walked through here with my mum and sister-in-law a few years back on the way to the theatre; I came near here to watch a friend do the Changing of the Guard Ceremony; I also remembered this park from other trips, from bringing my own children. Memories flutter past never fully forming and filter away. I take in the beauty of the park, slightly afraid that this will not be the place. But it is exotic. An Egyptian Goose waddles past me, its brown and blue feathers mesmerising. I imagine I am anywhere in the world. I pass a huge fig tree full of green fruit, and I fall in love again with these spaces. A bird in the sky catches my eye and I laugh at myself; I could have sworn that was a pelican. Then a heron, prehistoric looking, tall and self-assured, flies from a fence and on to the chimney breast and I feel like crying. This is the place. Tall colourful flowers fill the front garden, and it looks just as charming and magical as I remembered. A pelican lands next to me, and I feel like I am in a book myself!

The cottage was there, it wasn’t exactly as I described, not the right location and not the right name! My memories had merged reality and imagination to form a location for what I needed. I had a lovely adventure finding it again. 

Every time we learn something new or explore a new place, our brains form and strengthen patterns of connection. How well we remember something depends on many factors, including how often we revisit it, how much attention we paid at the time and the emotions attached to the experience. Rather than storing experiences like a video recording, the brain pieces memories together from many different elements—sights, sounds, smells, touch, emotions and meaning. When memories are incomplete, our brains often reconstruct the missing pieces using prior knowledge, related experiences and expectations—usually without us realising it. This kind of reconstruction happens surprisingly often, especially when memories are incomplete or distant. I sometimes wonder whether storytelling simply makes us more aware of this process, consciously blending remembered fragments with imagination to create places that feel real.

I sometimes find locations by searching maps. I will know the rough location I need. For example, George & Phillippa live in Gloucestershire. I needed a grand house. George had money, Phillippa was from royal lineage. So, I searched maps to find a manor house. Hatherley Manor was perfect. Sweeping lawns, imposing but charming building. I began to write. A gate house from another memory found its way into the story. A long driveway, a walled garden and a woodland borrowed from childhood gradually merged with places I’d seen in films until the house became entirely its own. 

When we decided to go and stay in Hatherley Manor for the night and take some pictures recently, I felt disorientated as we arrived. There was no gate house. The long lawn had been a clever photo edit. The brick building in front of me was far from the place now in my book. I laughed at myself a little. 

I actually love the way that we create stories. That it requires a merging of memory and imagination. That within this meeting space we discover brand new worlds. Places that lay foundations for characters to grow, to be challenged and to challenge us. 

So, if like me you find yourself distressed by story locations not matching reality, be kind to yourself. Readers are looking for a good story, not a surveyor’s map. Trust your imagination. Merge memories. Search maps. Create worlds. After all, they’re the places we hope readers will get lost in.