The influence of David Lynch

When I decided to write a romance novel - which rapidly became a series - I wanted it to evoke the world I knew when I was in Tessa’s position and at Tessa’s age. The early 1990s.

Creating a truly authentic evocation of being a young adult in that time meant steeping Boyfriend Practice in the pop culture that defined us then - not to mention now and likely always. We were Generation X in our prime, raised on a diet of John Hughes movies, Grange Hill and sticky-backed plastic.

A lot of pop culture isn't too firmly tied to a specific time. We all knew and enjoyed music from earlier generations and many of us enjoyed older movies, too. One of the only unique definitive cultural 'moments' came in 1990-91, when the arrival of David Lynch and Mark Frost's TV series Twin Peaks resonated overwhelmingly with me and almost all of my friends.

For a start, the show came across the Atlantic on a boatload of hype. We were months behind America in getting to see it but in those pre-Internet days, there were no spoilers.

Secondly, it was a show that seemed to be made specifically for us teens. Our worldview and the people we saw ourselves as were fully represented in the form of James, Donna, Maddy, Bobby and Shelly - the brat pack of Twin Peaks.

And finally, there was Sherilyn Fenn. The show might have been about the devastation caused by the murder of a beautiful blonde teenager, but it was the sultry brunette who dominated every newspaper and magazine article with her other-worldly beauty.

She looked like Marilyn Monroe reborn. And her character was so deliciously offbeat, sashaying into shot accompanied by her own sax-led theme tune, beguiling teenagers and bewitching their parents - the fathers in particular.

I remember that my Dad’s eyes were on stalks whenever she was onscreen. He soon lost interest in the plot but would always come and watch for as long as it took for Sherilyn to appear before wandering off again, declaring that it ‘wasn’t exactly Howard’s Way’ - a line I have given to Tessa’s father in the first book.

That made Twin Peaks ‘our’ programme for my generation. Our parents rejected it because they were used to narratives that took them from point A to point C via point B.

But Lynch had no time for people who ordered from the set menu, and defying what our parents expected to see from a TV show made us teenagers cling to Twin Peaks all the tighter - even if, like Tessa, we weren't always entirely sure what we were watching.

In the days before box sets, let alone streaming services, the original UK broadcast schedule for Twin Peaks in 1990-91 gave me the timeline for Boyfriend Practice. Season 1 aired weekly on BBC2 between October 23 and December 11 1990... autumn term. Season 2 aired between January 23 and June 18 1991... spring through summer terms.

Some of the synergies between my story and Lynch's storytelling are happy accidents. For example, he loved dualities and doppelgängers. Tessa is a bisexual young woman, someone who lacks confidence and self-worth but who can equally dominate the stage in her school play and fight like a tiger in competitive sports. She fits the profile, although I created her long before deciding what point in time her story should be told.

As a result of feeling a bit playful while writing the book, there are several other Easter eggs in Boyfriend Practice for my fellow Twin Peaks devotees to savour. It's nothing overt and it won't detract from enjoying my book if you never watched the show, it's just little things - a name here, a description there - which are intended to raise a smile among fellow addicts.

I shall restrain myself from giving away any spoilers to illustrate the point. But it is safe to point out that the title of the Blue Rose Series itself is, of course, a reference not only to a key plot device in Boyfriend Practice but also to the super-secret FBI files managed in Twin Peaks by Deputy Director Gordon Cole - the character that Lynch himself played.

Just as I finished the first draft of my manuscript, news came that Lynch had died. I believe that Boyfriend Practice makes a much better tribute than the hyperbolic tsunami that broke in the days that followed his loss because it simply shows how he helped kids of my age define themselves. And how now, in our middle age, he has left us with a unique gift that should continue to intrigue us all for generations to come.