I wrote Spook the gamekeeper into Welcome to Oakhaven because he is, or was, when I was a lad, part of the countryside. He is often depicted as an enemy of the gamekeeper but I found they tended to shared a real love of the country, the woods and the wildlife. Those old poachers didn't rape the countryside but took only what they could eat, or a few birds or fish for an old woman or someone needy. That's what I remember of the country village, how they helped each other.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Welcome-Oakhaven-Mrs-Jackson-Settles-ebook/dp/B00LUNMD24/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1406736695&sr=1-1&keywords=sullatober+dalton

People say it's peaceful in a country village, nothing ever changes. For me it is in the city, things never change. In the country, every day is different, the trees change, the birds grow silent and after the daffodils come the crocus and then all the border flowers. Maybe that's why I find it easy to write about country people, They adapt easily to the seasons and always seem more interesting than townies hurrying to beat rush hour through the same buildings in the same streets.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Welcome-Oakhaven-Mrs-Jackson-Settles-ebook/dp/B00LUNMD24/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1406736695&sr=1-1&keywords=sullatober+dalton

When we moved to Aberdeen, people told us the people were like the granite, hard to chip. My wife's vivacious personality soon overcame that. Her outgoing personality was infectious and from a rather sombre dull laddie I became a bit of an extrovert. I had to,there a flow of relatives came to 'make sure she was all right'. She was a town girl after all and was now in the depths of the country, going for walks  and getting involved with the Brownies and community gala day floats.  
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Welcome-Oakhaven-Mrs-Jackson-Settles-ebook/dp/B00LUNMD24/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1406736695&sr=1-1&keywords=sullatober+dalton

What I enjoyed about writing Welcome to Oakhaven was that the characters just came along as the story developed. I didn't have to plan a protagonist or an antagonist, heroine and anti-heroine, as I prefer, they just belonged in the village. It makes the planning of a story so much easier and I've tried in later books to have the same experience with some success. I'd hate to write detective novels where one must have all kinds of obscure plots and clues, I'd need a chart as big as a living room.http://www.amazon.co.uk/Welcome-Oakhaven-Mrs-Jackson-Settles-ebook/dp/B00LUNMD24/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1406736695&sr=1-1&keywords=sullatober+dalton

While I have had many complements from readers from Cape Town to Scotland about Welcome to Oakhaven, there are inevitably, those who would like Mrs Jackson to have a warmer, even hotter, relationship with the colonel, or feel there should be this, or shouldn't be that. I wrote it to entertain my wife. She approved and, while I welcome advice for future sequels I will leave Welcome as it is in her memory.
Sullatober Dalton

Moral limits, village life, community life, Canada, Africa, Australia, dreamy country villages,  I've been asked how I came to include Mrs Boniface in Welcome to Oakhaven. I had always been fascinated by people like Mrs Boniface, people who maintain the morals and general intellectual level of a community. People complain about them, laugh at them, even ridicule them, but they are part of the fabric of a living village community. They are, in a way, the limit of the village's tolerance, the limit to which a person can go in trying to dominate others. The rest of the community understand they must stop short of that limit if they wish to be included. It's like a town drunk, nobody challenges for the job, he sets the limit. There are other examples, even in corporate offices and undertakings, I've seen them in Canada, in Africa, in Australia and even in dreamy country villages in Britain.

I was raised in a small village and have moved about and lived in twenty five small communities full of the kind of fascinating characters that appear in Welcome.
Sullatober Dalton