Although the novel is fictional you do include some women’s history, for example, you highlight the difficulty of obtaining a loan without a husbands say so. Would you say your interests lie with women’s history, or the romantic aspects of your novels?
Charmian Coates: Both, I should think. I was only eight when the war ended, but I know that in the 1940s it was more of a man’s world - a woman was in the main a second-class citizen.

What was it about the pre-war newspaper that influenced the novel?
Charmian Coates: When I studied the pre-war newspaper, I was looking for a strong subject to base a novel on, something that would provide trauma - and a young bridegroom losing his life in a fire was certainly that. I felt that this was a good beginning that would ensure that my readers would want to keep on turning the pages to find out what would happen next to Laura. Apart from a small widow’s pesion a young mother in the 1930s wouldn’t have got the financial help she would no doubt get today.

The character Laura, runs her own boarding-house, did you draw a few comparisons with yourself as you also run a hotel?
Charmian Coates: A few comparisons perhaps. But the 1940s were completely different to the 1970s which was when my husbad and myself had our hotel - there was food rationing for a start. Also in the 1970s we had a freezer and the convenience of frozen food.

You have used a different time frame for each of your books, what era will you use next?
Charmian Coates: I am having two Indian novels (in one book) published next by Pegasus - the second novel, ‘Return to India’, which is set in the late 1940s, and is based on quite a few of my memories of when my mother took me to India (her girlhood home) and is the sequel to ‘Flower of India’, which is set in the late 1920s (and loosely based on my parents meeting in India). I have completed a further novel called, ‘The Frozen Tear’. This is set in the present day and 9th Century Norway. I was inspired to write this novel when I went on a week’s cruise to the Norwegian fjords last year.

Did the book require much researching, in terms of historical accuracy and the language you use?
Charmian Coates: As far as ‘The View From Her Window’ was concerned I researched old Blackpool Evening Gazettes on a machine at the Central Library and some books about Blackpool - especially wartime cookery books.. I also used information given me by friends who were brought up in Blackpool during the war.

Your books coincide with where you have been living, Oxford and now Blackpool where you currently reside, where would you plan on basing your next book?
Charmian Coates: At the moment I’ve no further plans for a novel after ‘The Frozen Tear’. But if something suddenly inspires me then I will write about it.