Amelia Berry’s Favourite Holiday

Amelia Berry joins me this week to talk about a favourite holiday and her new novel Cooking Up A Christmas Storm, book 2 in The Highland Cookery School Series published by Hera. Over to Amelia …

Hello. Thank you Morton for inviting me back to your blog to celebrate book 2 in The Highland Cookery School Series.

This time I’m thinking about travel and writing and I was going to tell you about my favourite holiday, but it’s so hard to pick out one trip. I love visiting new places, whether it’s on the other side of the world or a corner of the UK I’ve never made it to before. It’s rarer for me to revisit somewhere, but the Scottish Highlands are an exception to that rule.

I’ve been to Kingussie and the Cairngorms, to Skye, to Oban, and I’m already planning a trip further North – hopefully all the way to Orkney – for next year. But for now let me tell you about my most recent trip to Oban for Hogmanay 2024. This was the first time I’ve ever planned a trip specifically as research for a book. I’ve incorporated places I’ve visited or lived in into my novels lots of times, but I’ve never gone on holiday with a specific book in mind before.

This trip was absolutely explicitly intended as research for my newest Highland Cookery School novel, Cooking Up A Christmas Storm, that takes place across Christmas and Hogmanay and centres around the planning for a grand New Year’s Eve party. The only problem with this plan being that I’m a bit of a New Year’s Eve hater. I never go out on New Year’s Eve. It’s busy and overcrowded and overpriced and after a week of full on Christmas cheer I turn into a slightly belated grinch around the turn of the year.

To write about a grand Hogmanay extravaganza I clearly needed to take drastic measures to get in the right frame of mind, so with a slightly weeping credit card I booked my husband and I into a rather nice hotel in Oban for their three night Hogmanay package. I was – I admit – fully expecting to hate it. I don’t get on with organised fun. I much prefer spontaneous joys and games, but actually, we had a wonderful time.

Oban was, as you would expect in deepest December, grey and slightly foreboding but still fabulously beautiful. I am someone whose mood is always instantly improved by being near the coast and this trip was no different.

We whiled away our days taking bracing walks along the seafront, sitting in the hotel’s hot tub and drinking copious quantities of hot chocolate over board games in the hotel lounge.

Hogmanay itself started with a fantastic dinner. The food all weekend was incredible – that element definitely fed into the very food and cookery based books I’m writing. The later part of the evening was the ceilidh. I haven’t been to a ceilidh for at least fifteen years and I’d forgotten how much fun it can be. The caller, and other dancers, were sympathetic to our terrible English dancing – I hope that we balanced out our lack of competence with a surfeit of enthusiasm. At midnight we sang Auld Lang Syne and listened to a piper as the new year came in. And it felt warm, and friendly, and hopeful, exactly as the beginning of a new year should.

It’s not something I’d want to do every year, but it’s an experience I’m very glad to have had, and I’d definitely go back in the future. Did any of that trip actually feed into the Hogmanay story in Cooking Up A Christmas Storm? Well, the food of the Highlands is a huge part of all these books, but apart from that you’ll just have to read it and find out!

About Amelia Berry

Amelia Berry is a novelist, short story writer, editor and writing tutor, based in Worcester, where she lives with her husband. No kids. No pets. There were goldfish once. That ended badly.

She writes romantic comedies as Amelia, Ally Sinclair and Alison May. Her Highland Cookery School series is out now. https://www.herabooks.com/series/the-highland-cookery-school/

In her non-writing time Amelia is a tour guide for the National Trust. You can find out more about her at www.alison-may.co.uk, on Instagram @MsAlisonMay or on YouTube – www.youtube.com/@alallyalison

About Cooking Up A Christmas Storm

Can you find love if you can’t be yourself?

Jodie Simpson’s life is falling apart.

She’s been dumped by her girlfriend, Gemma, lost her job and is about to be kicked out of her flat. When she mistakenly opens a letter addressed to Gemma and finds a job offer to work at the Highland Cookery School, she makes a momentary decision that will change her life forever.

Jodie heads to the Scottish Highlands to begin her new job – as Gemma. But it all starts to work a little too well, and she finds herself loving her new life at the cookery school. As the snow starts to settle and the festive magic cast its spell, she finds herself falling for Pavel, the estate caretaker.

But Jodie cannot keep up her fake identity forever and a storm is brewing.

If she tells the truth, will she lose the new life she has built for herself, and the man who might just be The One?

An uplifting romcom that fans of Sarah Morgan, Heidi Swain and Katie Ginger will adore

Buying link: https://www.herabooks.com/books/cooking-up-a-christmas-storm-amelia-berry/

Explore the whole Highland Cookery School Series https://www.herabooks.com/series/the-highland-cookery-school/