Whilst researching my novels Starlight in New York and Sunrise in New York, I reveled in a two-week tour of New York City’s finest diners. It was important, you understand, to make sure I had the details just right. The sounds, the smells, the tastes of everything that was bad for me on the menu.

What follows is an extract from my travel journal written on November 2nd 2015 when I visited The Westway Diner.

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The Westway Diner on 9th Avenue, just north of 43rd Street, is a neat oblong decked out in shades of rhubarb and custard. The lighting fixtures look 1970s by design. Large, circular bulbs, the colour of terracotta and mustard, suspended from the ceiling tiles. Liquor bottles and upturned Martini glasses are stacked behind the cash register, and all the staff wear black.

Faux leather booths promenade down the centre of the restaurant. They’re filled with families and friendship groups who laugh, and tell stories about their day-to-day lives.

I sit in the corner on a table for one near a man who mutters show tune lyrics to himself.

Though Halloween came and went three days ago, spiders still dangle from the ceiling and the spooky drawings graffitied across the front window in the spirit of All Hallows Eve have

yet to be washed away. There’s a pleasant buzz in the air but this isn’t a tourist extravaganza like Ellen’s on Broadway. Here, locals loll about, chomping on omelettes and pancakes. Dressed in tracksuits and sneakers; jeans and sports T-Shirts.

One older man in a baseball hat and lightweight anorak joins another. The fella already sitting at the table doesn’t even look up to acknowledge his companion. He waves his hand, holding it up, while his eyes and his pen stay fixed on his paper. The guy in the anorak starts talking but still his friend doesn’t raise his head. He offers only the occasional side-ways glance to make it clear he’s listening even if he is, at the same time, scratching the side of his jaw over some headline in the news.

A band of off-duty cops enter the diner. They order fried breakfasts while Big Yellow Taxi by Joni Mitchell plays out in the background.

If you’d like to read the books inspired by this travel journal, you can find them here.