It was a question the author and journalist Allison Pearson knew might be seen as "heretical." Has this series of The Great British Bake Off become just a little bit dull?

Had the "perfect soufflé of primetime patisserie run out of puff?" she asked. The contestants bland; any sense of suspense or jeopardy gone. Had it not only deflated this year but never really risen at all?

The Telegraph columnist, posing the question last week, was absolutely right about the lack of suspense. There's been no Bingate this year - the carefully-edited moment in which a Baked Alaska was taken out of a freezer and left to melt by a rival contestant. Ian's reign as star baker was becoming wearing, and, before Wednesday night when the contestants were culled to five, there was not one ounce of jeopardy at all.

And yet for me, and I suspect many of the ten million viewers who still tuned in this week, suspense isn't the reason we watch this primetime success. We view it for the characters as much as any competition or bakes: trying to fathom what motivates them to spend three hours in a tent constructing a Victorian fruit cake decorated as a tennis court.

Why would a prison governor discuss, in all earnestness, and without any sense of irony, the importance of fashioning a bread lion - and not a dog? What leads a gentle male nurse, on the edge of tears, to confess to over ten million people: "My father was a general. Failure is not an option." And why does a young mother-of-three, dispelling stereotypes by baking in a headscarf, and with a superlative array of facial expressions, admit, her voice shaking with relief and a sudden shot of self-belief: "I'm never proud of myself but I'm actually really proud." Moments like these - swift glimpses into the deepest recesses of the contestant's psyches - are the point of Bake Off:

I'm intrigued as to why firefighter Mat, who grew up in a house "where we didn't have dinner parties; don't think my mum ever made a vol au vent" thinks he can wing it in a competition in which he didn't practise for the latter stages, never thinking he'd get there. ("Don't let a fondant tennis court be the end of it," admonished Sue. And yet it was.) Or why bluff prison governor Paul, a man who shrugs off criticism like the proverbial duck in water, wants to fashion a fondant bikini, with gusset, or sculpt an apple into a swan. ("I learned it in a day. It's what I like doing. The arty side of things," he told Mel.)

Then there are the bakers who are so perfectionist they make Heath Robinson style gadgets with which to perfect their creations. Last year it was Nancy, who produced a guillotine to slice her jaffa cakes in the first episode - and went on to win. This year, it's Ian, who bakes bread in a flowerpot, fashions steel to create leaves, and this week produced a ladies finger chopper.

"Each of my ladies fingers is exactly nine centimetres long," he explained, with a somewhat wolfish grin. Coming after his Road Kill pie, inspired by kill that's been "bumped not flattened", this sounded not just exacting but slightly sinister.

Of course, these eccentricities are gentle. Bake Off remains a warm, comforting bath in a troublesome world. An hour of unapologetic escapism in which people are largely nice - although, over half way through, some more overt rivalry is finally, thankfully, coming to the fore.

It was there in Nadiya's one-handed clap against her bicep when Ian constructed a show-stopping Victorian crown and her less-than-effusive "very good". (The sort of "very good" you could imagine her giving a child who consistently draws better than its younger siblings - but still wants praise.) It was there in Flora's shake of the head, arms crossed like a curmudgeonly gossip, and her or Nadiya's: "Flipping heck!" (It could have been either of them.) We could see it in Mat's flash of irritation - "Aww, you've twisted it" - when Paul, trying to help him ease his Charlotte Russe onto a pedestal - apparently exacerbated the split. And in Ian's barely-perceptible tic of disappointment - a slight tightening of the jaw - when anaesthetist Tamal, beautiful, and distinctly Eeyorish after daring to hope he might do well and then failing last week, finally became star baker.

Writing in yesterday's Telegraph, last year's winner Nancy revealed that "once you get to half way it's a completely different atmosphere. It becomes more intimate." Much of the set is cleared away and the crew scaled down; contestants know the production team, the judges, and each other.

For the viewers, things become more interesting, too, for we know the remaining, more-focussed, bakers well enough to care. We're attuned to the tensions, as well as to their loyalties - or lack of them. We can predict that Nadiya will look at Mat in utter disbelief when he says he's put his icing tennis rackets in the oven.

"Oven?"

"Yeah."

"Were we supposed to put it in the oven?"

Or that Mat, in those few seconds of horrified disbelief, will know, as we do, that he's going home that week.

In fact, that moment encapsulates the GBBO style of suspense. Momentary and understated but still poignant and telling in its own small way.

It's the quarter final next week. Here's to more of these vignettes.

In the month since The Art of Baking Blind came out in paperback, I may have put this photo on social media more than once. Not just because I'm proud of that WH Smith chart position but because it makes me want to laugh out loud.

This is probably the only chance I'll get to snuggle up to Ross Poldark (Demelza's just out of the picture, to the far left; I've rather pointedly edited her out.) I've also been found nudging Marian Keyes and Nick Hornby in Waterstones: 

And squeezed next to one of my literary heroes, Sarah Waters:

If it seems arrogant or self-indulgent posting these shots, then I do so knowing that my position jostling them is likely to be short-lived. A month after publication, and my novel is no longer at the front of my local Waterstone's - although it is proudly displayed in my local Waitrose, Tesco, Asda and Morrison's (and seemingly out of stock on amazon). And so, as I embark on my third book, I am drawing on these photos to write harder, faster, brighter. Here they are: proof that I once did it; that I might - perhaps - do it again.  My avocado spine is aligned with other authors. Proper authors that people have heard of. Look, I tell myself: it's really me.

When I wobble - as I know I will because self-doubt seems intrinsic to writing and to my psyche - I will also remember the gorgeous reviews I've received, and the blog posts written prior to publication day. I've collated my blog posts, partly to remind myself of the flurry of activity; and partly because I want to preserve the optimism and excitement of writing my first novel in some way.

There was a debut author spotlight interview for Shaz's Book Boudoir, here, and a Q and A for the Reads & Recipes blog, here.  I wrote about my experience of being an author for Off the Shelf Books, here; and a feature about why we bake for reviewer Chicklit Chloe here. 

For Good Housekeeping magazine, I blogged on the different types of baker, here, and for women's fiction website novelicious, I wrote a literary love letter to Kate Atkinson, click here. I have also written for novelicious about my book deal moment and my top writing tips, as well as being interviewed, here. I wrote about the allure of baking and offered a carrot cake recipe. Finally, I shared a recipe for gingerbread men on Alba in Bookland's blog, here.

For now, this flurry of publicity is over as I wait for the copy edits of my second novel, That Summer at Skylark Farm, and start on my third. The editor who bought both books has been headhunted, so I'm writing without a contract: crafting something with which to surprise, and hopefully delight, my publishers. If the prospect is exciting, it's also daunting. But I have two books written, now; and these photographs to buoy, chivvy and inspire me. There I am; nestling up to Poldark. Yes, it's really me.

So, after months of anticipation it's finally here: the day this little beauty hits the shelves as a paperback and hopefully finds a wider reading public. This was the present delivered earlier this week and I have to admit to giving a private squeal in my kitchen when I opened the box of embossed and stickered copies of my book.

All those discussions about fonts and colours and levels of embossing have been worth it for a photo doesn't do these novels justice. You need to stroke the cover and peek inside to appreciate the level of effort the Hodder design department has gone to to make this look enticing. As pretty and exquisite as a French macaron, the hope is it will prove just as irresistible.

Of course we can't know how it will sell but, thankfully, the supermarkets and shops seem to have liked it. Today, The Art of Baking Blind will appear on shelves in Waitrose, Tesco, Morrison's and Asda; it'll be in the WH Smith paperback chart, and on tables in WH Smith Travel; and there will be copies in Waterstone's and independent bookshops, too. 

The novelist Patrick Gale has just tweeted pictures of a box of copies of his 17th novel, A Place Called Winter. The excitement never fades, he said. I can't imagine writing 17 books but I can well understand that that tingle of exhilaration never truly goes away. Now, I just have to hope that potential readers feel a smidgeon of the excitement I do. 

I found these vintage baking accessories in a Parisien salon du the, and while I would usually be lured by the patisserie, these were the items that drew me in.

My first novel, The Art of Baking Blind, features a fictitious 1966 recipe book, and I could see its author carefully weighing ingredients decanted from such jars before concocting her millefeuille.  Kathleen Eaden attended the Le Cordon Bleu before my novel began - and, as I feasted on these covetable kitchen accessories, I imagined her life outside my pages: a late teenage rebellion; an affair with a pastry chef;  late nights and early mornings fuelled by coffee stored in tins like these:

Perhaps it's no surprise that, as a writer, I covet vintage things. Despite knowing that most "preloved" finds are tat, I'm drawn to old china, books, furniture: anything with the potential to trigger a story.

I live in an eighteenth-century cottage that we renovated. And as we opened up chimneys and pulled at floorboards, it kept revealing secrets; glimpses of others' lives. Who hid that toy soldier up the chimney? Or buried the 1930s advert for slimming aids? Or the glass bottle labelled arsenic in the garden? Who owned these pieces from the past that kept whispering their tales?

Then there are the vintage finds I’ve picked up at jumble sales or local auctions: a delicate coffee cup and saucer, etched in gold leaf; mismatched crockery; a 1950s pitcher with “Jug” somewhat unnecessarily stamped on it. A child’s eighteenth-century rocking chair, bought for £70, whittled in oak by a father, and revealing a name graffitied by a small girl: Ivy.  A French-polished writing box, belonging to a grandfather who took poetry books to war and lost them when captured on Kos; my grandmother’s locket, which I can never open without catching the scent of her.

I never thought I would write historical fiction but it now seems inevitable that the past would worm its way in. "The past kept pricking at me," explains LP Hartley's narrator, in The Go-Between, and it's a quotation that could preface many of the novels that fascinate me.

We are the sum of our past, as well as our present and future, which surely explains the burgeoning interest in genealogy and the existence of programmes such as the BBC's You Do You Think You Are? as well as our nostalgic hankering for vintage things. "The past is not a package one can lay away," as Emily Dickinson said. And we see that throughout our culture - from watching Downton to being fascinated by World War II to visiting National Trust houses. And yes, to purchasing accessories inspired by the 1950s or 60s: those Tala measuring jugs; or Keep Calm and Carry On cards, which work precisely because we know they are a play on Kitchener's iconic poster. Because we share that history.

When writing about a farm in north Cornwall, run by the same family for six generations, it seemed obvious, then, that I would draw on my own family's past and in particular the stories my mother told me of spending her childhood summers on a Cornish farm.

But though her recollections fed into it, I needed a prop: some tangible evidence that would sit on my desk and inspire me as I pushed through the third draft, and the fourth, fifth and sixth. Something that would whisper its past to me, when I was feeling sluggish; that along with my photographs of the area, would prompt me to think: "what if?" and, "and then what?"  

This sepia photograph does just that:

It shows my great grandfather, Matthew Henry Jelbert, hoeing mangolds on Trewiddle, his farm, just outside St Austell. He looks slightly shy yet rather proud as he leads his shire horse and the plough. Dressed for the camera, he sports a tie, white shirt and collar, gold fob watch and luxuriant moustache. His farmhand waits discreetly, for this is Matthew’s moment, even though the horse, the most expensive animal on the farm, dominates the picture.

Matthew Jelbert was born in 1880 in Newlyn East, towards the tip of Cornwall, seven miles from Truro and Newquay. He died in 1970, two years before I was born, yet both he and his farm - or rather the tales of them - played a vivid part in my childhood.

The summers spent there in the Fifties were the happiest of my mother's early years. Her father, Maurice, was a Methodist minister. But when he helped with the harvest he was just a farmer’s boy and she was freed of the constraints imposed on a minister’s daughter.

She would run wild with her cousin Graham, eighteen months younger than her but, growing up on a farm, more worldly-wise. They would climb trees; blow birds’ nests; hide in the stooks of corn; play doctors and nurses under the rhododendron bushes. A chalky stream ran at the bottom of the field, from the china clay pits, and she believed that it was milk, and Trewiddle, heaven. For a child expected to go to church three times on a Sunday, it was quite literally the land of milk and honey.

Trewiddle held such a strong sway over me as a child that I named my doll’s house and its connected farm after it. And when I came to write my novel, about a granite farmhouse on a remote stretch of the north Cornish coast, my mother and her cousin’s memories, and the photos of the farm, weaved their way in.

Great grandpa Matthew watches me, now, as I type.

My past is pricking at me. I am taking liberties with it. But I hope I do it justice.