The one where I talk about the origins of Castle Street and how one shop became a community
Christmas at the Cat Café is out in all formats worldwide – print, digital, and audio – on 15th September. Who’s excited for a return to Castle Street?
This gorgeous street full of independent shops and cafés in the fictional North Yorkshire seaside town of Whitsborough Bay was the very first setting I created and I had no idea it was going to evolve and become such a reader favourite.
My debut book was New Beginnings at Seaside Bloomsin which Sarah Peterson returns to her hometown of Whitsborough Bay to take over her Auntie Kay’s florist shop, Seaside Blooms. When I started writing the book, I was only focused on this one shop and hadn’t really thought about the street as a whole. But on the way to the shop on Sarah’s first day, I mentioned Sarah and Auntie Kay picking up takeaway drinks and pastries from a café called The Chocolate Pot and suddenly I could picture what that looked like. The Chocolate Pot appeared several times across the book and I even named the owner/manager – Tara – but I had no plans to write a story about her. New Beginnings at Seaside Blooms was the first book in a trilogy and the thought of writing three books was scary enough – no way did I have any headspace to think beyond that.
I finished the Welcome to Whitsborough Bay series (which ended up being a four-book series) and the next book burning inside me to write was All You Need is Love. Although my career pre-writing was predominantly in HR, I’d taken some time out to pursue a dream of setting up and managing a specialist teddy bear shop. I opened Bear’s Pad in Richmond, North Yorkshire and managed it for nearly two years before moving to Scarborough two hours away (too far to commute). On quiet days in the shop, I worked on Seaside Blooms and also studied my craft. I really wanted to pay homage to that period of my life – when I started writing - by penning a book partially set in a teddy bear shop so Bear With Me was created, located opposite Seaside Blooms.
Later that year, I decided to write and release my first ever Christmas book and I couldn’t imagine setting it anywhere other than Castle Street. When I had Bear's Pad, I’d loved the approach to Christmas - putting up the tree, getting in all the fabulous festive stock, putting on the festive music and helping customers choose gifts. I wanted to create a business that could do really well at Christmas and a chocolate shop felt like the perfect Christmassy retailer. Charlee’s Chocolates was born in Christmas Wishes at the Chocolate Shop.
I now had three businesses in Castle Street in which stories were set – Seaside Blooms, Bear With Me and Charlee's Chocolates. I was able to create some lovely cameos as it was logical that the business owners in a small community like this would know each other. I didn’t have any particular plans to extend this retail community beyond Charlee's Chocolates but I had this vision of a special Christmas lights switch-on attended by the Castle Street traders. I first had a scene showing this in Christmas Wishes at the Chocolate Shop and it felt completely magical.
In one particular scene where Sarah from Seaside Blooms is telling Charlee all about it the approaching event, she mentions that Tara from The Chocolate Pot provides the hot drinks for free. It made sense to choose Tara because I'd already mentioned her and her cafe. I was going to have her providing cakes too but it seemed a big ask for one trader to do all the catering so I decided to mention another business who'd provide the cakes – Carly’s Cupcakes situated next door to The Chocolate Pot. It was meant to be a throwaway comment but the strangest thing happened the minute I mentioned the business. Suddenly I knew who Carly was and the story she had to tell so I wrote her book – Christmas at Carly’s Cupcakes – immediately after Christmas Wishes at the Chocolate Shop. It was one of those rare books that just writes itself.
Because I’d placed Carly’s Cupcakes next to The Chocolate Pot, it felt logical to me that Tara and Carly would be friends. Tara therefore appeared several times in Carly’s story and, even though she’d been mentioned from the very first Castle Street book, I still had no plans to tell her story or any feel for what that story would even be. She was Carly's friend and another business owner and that was her sole purpose.
Until one day after work, she and Carly had a conversation and Tara – who was really guarded about her past – revealed something unexpected. I really hadn’t seen it coming and it excited me so much that here was no way I couldn't tell her story. Starry Skies Over The Chocolate Pot Cafépicked up where Christmas at Carly’s Cupcakes left off, but from Tara’s perspective, and her story resulted in the creation of yet another shop on Castle Street (but I won’t mention what to avoid spoilers for anyone who hasn’t read Tara’s story yet).
So now I had a growing community with five businesses in which stories were set, three further businesses in which several scenes had been set – The Wedding Emporium run by Ginny, Bay Books run by father and daughter team Marcus and Lily, and the one in Tara’s story. I’d also mentioned Castle Jewellery and that there were another two cafés on the street although I hadn’t named them. From humble beginnings, the street had naturally evolved into ten named businesses.
I knew I wasn’t finished with Castle Street but the book plans I had meant a natural break from the setting. I’d started a brand new series set in a hedgehog rescue centre – Hedgehog Hollow – and I wanted to revisit a story I’d started but parked a couple of years before set in The Starfish Café a couple of miles south of Whitsborough Bay.
Castle Street was never far from my thoughts. As the fourth book in the Hedgehog Hollow series is called A Wedding at Hedgehog Hollow, I’m sure those readers who haven’t got to that book yet can guess that it does include a wedding. Where better for the wedding party to choose their dresses than The Wedding Emporium? I have further connections to the street in The Starfish Café series, particularly in the final book, Summer Nights at The Starfish Café.
In that book, Hollie spends some time in Charlee’s Chocolates and asks her about an empty unit opposite which appears to be getting a refurb. Charlee tells her it’s going to be a cat café. You have no idea how much it thrilled me to plant that in there! I’d mentioned in previous Facebook Lives that I was going to write a book set in a cat café at some point but the announcement that it was coming out this Christmas hadn’t formally been made on the socials. I loved it when readers started sending me messages saying they were intrigued by this new business and asking if the cat café was coming next!
And so that brings us to the sixth Castle Street business in which the main story is set and how lovely to set it once more at Christmas. Readers often tell me how much they love Castle Street and ask when there’ll be another story set there so I hope there’ll be some very happy readers out there as they return to this special street and wonderfully supportive community.
Except this time, not everyone’s quite as lovely and supportive. New business owner Tabby has more than her fair share of challenges to face while trying to get the Castle Street Cat Café up and running in the approach to Christmas, as you can see from the blurb at the bottom of this post.
What can you expect? Lots of Castle Street Christmassy loveliness, including the gorgeous Christmas lights switch-on ceremony which always feels so alive to me. Some of your favourite characters will make an appearance and you’ll meet several new ones as well as being introduced to a few new shops. Will they be the settings for future Castle Street stories? You never know!
Thank you to everyone who has pre-ordered Christmas at the Cat Café already. It’ll go up for pre-order on Audible a little nearer the time and I’ll announce that on the socials as soon as I spot it. Hope you enjoy Tabby’s special story. I’ve loved all the excited reactions from readers who adore cats but if you’re not a cat lover, I hope you’ll still read this as it’s a lovely story about so much more than cats. And, who knows, you might fall in love with those felines by the end of it!
Big hugs and cat snuggles
Jessica xx
It's the most wonderful time of the year on Castle Street, and there's a paw-some new business opening....
It had always been Tabby's dream to work with cats and an inheritance from her beloved nanna has finally made that a reality. Idyllic Castle Street in Whitsborough Bay couldn’t be a better place for pastry chef Tabby to open a cat café with her boyfriend, Leon.
But when Leon leaves her in the lurch, the pressure mounts for Tabby. With Christmas fast approaching, she has to open the café on her own – a daunting prospect, especially when she's been hiding her health issues from the ones she loves.
Faced with local resistance to the café – and somebody seemingly determined that she won’t succeed – Tabby will need her friends, family and cats more than ever to recover her broken Christmas spirit and pull together for a Christmas miracle.
Will the cat café bring the festive joy to Castle Street as Tabby had hoped or will it be a cat-astrophe? And can the magic of Christmas on Castle Street mend Tabby's broken heart as well as her business?
Escape with million-copy bestseller Jessica Redland this Christmas for the purr-fect festive treat!