I'll see, say, a story or an antique on television, or I'll even be walking through the shops, and I'll see something and take a picture of it. Everything's recorded on the Madame Blanc file on my phone! Or sometimes it's a headline, so I've got it written down — I've got random things written everywhere! Then Sue and I will do a bit of research — there's a lot of great things about Sue Vincent, and one of them is that some of our plots are really quite complicated, and sometimes Acorn [the show's international broadcaster] and Channel 5 say 'we've never heard of this before', and Sue's got a stack of research behind it!
"Before we start writing the series, I'll read reams of information and then I'll work out what's the first episode, what's the second episode, and so on. Then I write an eight-page document, which is very detailed, of every single scene — that's the complicated bit, the one that keeps me up at night! Once that's done, I know it's going to be fine. Then I give it to Sue, and she literally goes under for about three days writing dialogue, we don't hear from her, and she writes about 20 pages too much, then we get together and hone it. It's an unusual way of writing because we both have very different skills, but for either of us to write the series by ourselves would take twice as long!