The one with the Easter egg hunt

Please note: This blog post was originally intended to be part of a newsletter sent out on Good Friday (18thApril 2025) but it was too long for the newsletter. We felt that massively cutting it down would be a shame so we decided to put it in a blog post and include a link to the newsletter, but that meant I needed to share the blog post before the newsletter was sent. If you’re a newsletter subscriber, you might therefore read this before the newsletter comes out. It’s still worth reading the newsletter as it has some different additional content. If you’ve here because you’ve not a blog subscriber but have received and read the newsletter, you might like to skim the first part which does duplicate the first part of the newsletter. Without further ado…

Hi everyone

Happy Easter! Whether Easter represents a key Christian moment for you, a long weekend off work, and/or a chance to indulge in lots of yummy chocolate, I hope you have a wonderful Easter weekend.

Today, I want to talk about Easter eggs (nom nom) but in relation to writing rather than the chocolate variety – still delicious in their own way.

What is a literary Easter egg?

Easter eggs in books are surprises left by the author for the reader to discover. This could include references to other books, character cameos, a piece of dialogue, an object, an inside joke, a secret message, a musical/film/art reference and so on. 

They might be something personal which won’t mean much to the readers but, more likely, they’ll be something regular readers can ‘get’.

My main Easter eggs

I’m a huge fan of including character cameos so this is the Easter egg I include in my books most frequently. I know that readers love these as I often see comments in reviews and sometimes even get messages from readers checking they’ve spotted all the cameos. My rule of thumb is never to force a cameo. I therefore don’t start writing a book with the intention of including a specific character or characters from other books.

Are you one of those readers who watches out for the cameos and gets excited when an ‘old friend’ appears? I have one reader who messages me when she finishes a book checking she’s spotted all the connections. I love that so much!

I’d written several Whitsborough Bay books when it struck me that Sarah, the owner of Seaside Blooms, had appeared in them all. I loved this because Sarah was the first character I created and New Beginnings at Seaside Blooms was the very first book I wrote (although it’s the second in the Welcome to Whitsborough Bay series). She features in all the books in that series, albeit only mentioned at the very end of book 1 – Making Wishes at Bay View, which is a prequel to the series. 

With having a shop on Castle Street, it made sense for Sarah to appear in all of the books set on the street – each book in the Christmas on Castle Street Collection and also in All You Need is Love which is partially set in the specialist teddy bear retailer, Bear With Me. It was also logical for her to appear in The Secret to Happiness as she has a contract for the flowers in The Ramparts Hotel where Alison, one of the main characters in that book, works. 

Sarah appeared in Snowflakes Over The Starfish Café as someone who knows the hero, Jake, but when I was writing the second book in the series – Spring Tides at The Starfish Café – mentioning her by name felt forced so that was the first Whitsborough Bay book omitting her. However, there was a logical point to mention Seaside Blooms in that book and also in the final one so, while I couldn’t see a seamless way of mentioning Sarah in all my Whitsborough Bay books, it was easy to mention Seaside Blooms in them all. Will I be able to keep that Easter egg going? As long as the mention makes sense, I’ll try to! It’s just gone in my festive release for this year so that’s fourteen books so far which include a mention of or a visit to Seaside Blooms.

My favourite book for cameos is Spring Tides at The Starfish Café. All three books in the series are told from café owner Hollie’s perspective plus one guest narrator. In the case of the second book it’s Tori who becomes a new friend of Hollie’s. There’s a scene where we discover Tori had cousins in Whitsborough Bay of a similar age to her and it struck me that it would be a great opportunity to make those cousins characters from previous books, as long as the ages worked. They did and the result is that Tori’s cousins are Matt (who is one of the main characters in Christmas Wishes at the Chocolate Shop) and his brother.By featuring Matt, readers get an insight into what has happened since that story. 

Spring Tides features a wedding. To avoid spoilers for anyone who hasn’t read it, I won’t say who gets married but I had great fun with some of the cameo appearances at the wedding, particularly with giving the groom connections to some characters from Finding Hope at Lighthouse Cove. These are a bit ‘blink and you’ll miss it’ but there are definitely readers who’ve spotted them.

Moving away from character cameos, I planted a lovely Easter egg near the end of Summer Nights at The Starfish Café where Hollie spots an empty shop opposite Charlee’s Chocolates and she and Charlee discuss what it’s going to become … a cat café. This was an Easter egg for a later release that year – Christmas at the Cat Café.

I have another ‘hint of things to come’ Easter egg in my Escape the Lakes series. In the first two books – The Start of Something Wonderful and A Breath of Fresh Air – there’s an empty shop mentioned in Willowdale. It’s mentioned in passing as part of the ongoing story and nothing big is made of it, but I have plans for that shop in a future book so watch this space!

Personal Easter eggs are fun to include. All You Need is Love is packed full of them. Many years ago, when writing a book was a mere twinkle in my eye, I set up my own specialist teddy bear shop which I ran for a couple of years. During that time I learned how to make jointed mohair artist bears – something which my main character Jemma and her mum Julie do. Julie’s brand name for her creations is Ju-Sea Bears which was the brand name I used for my bears. Julie’s name is a personal Easter egg too. I write under a pseudonym and Julie is my real name and my shop was called Bear’s Pad which is the name I give to Julie’s home in the book.

With my love for bears, I had intended to include an Easter egg of a named teddy bear in each book. I did this in my earliest books but some of those references got removed when my backlist was picked up by Boldwood and freshly edited. I was a little disappointed until I reasoned that, the more books I wrote, the harder it became to include a bear and also seem a little daft. This is therefore an Easter egg which appears only occasionally but I love it when a teddy bear does logically appear.

I’ve used the first names of all my family members at some point in my books. My mum and one of my cousins have read them all and they love spotting family names – a little Easter egg just for them.

I mentioned earlier that Easter eggs can be musical or film references. When I include these, I try to choose really well known artists/songs and big films so that readers are more likely to be familiar with them. I’ve included some of my all-time favourites. For example, ELO’s absolute classic Mr Blue Sky has a special moment in Chasing Dreams at Hedgehog Hollow, one of my favourite films, Dirty Dancing, features in The Secret to Happiness and another favourite, Strictly Ballroom, provides the inspiration for a thread in All You Need is Love.

My daughter is a massive Taylor Swift fan. A Forever Home at Honey Bee Croft was the first book released after she turned eighteen and I dedicated it to her and all Swifties. Main character, Joel, has a young daughter called Imogen who is also a Swiftie as a nod to my own daughter, and there’s a special moment for a Taylor Swift song in there too, although I won’t share it due to spoilers. 

Going back to character cameos, I was originally going to have several Whitsborough Bay characters appear in the Hedgehog Hollow world but decided to keep the worlds separate. There’s only one cameo in the Hedgehog Hollow series from a character in Making Wishes at Bay View and none in The Bumblebee Barn Collection. Some of my Hedgehog Hollow characters visit Castle Street so there are some Whitsborough Bay shops mentioned when they do that. They also spend time with a Castle Street regular who hasn’t had her own book yet but might have a future story.

I haven’t had any setting crossover characters in my Escape to the Lakes series but when Willowdale Hall is up and running and accepting guests, I’d quite like to have some guests from Whitsborough Bay staying. Nothing guaranteed, but that’s where my mind is at the moment. 

Hope you enjoyed this spoiler-free insight into some of my Easter eggs. Happy Easter egg hunting whether you’re searching for the chocolate variety this weekend or spotting them in my books!

Enjoy the rest of your Easter.

Big hugs

Jessica xx