Ideas

This just goes to show that you can take interesting pictures in the rain. Though I agree it's not that interesting, and it does rather sum up Lockdown Two....

But I digress. Writers are often asked where their ideas come from. In the case of my walks books, frequently a friend has suggested the writer concerned - this happened with Cornish Writers and Daphne du Maurier. In the case of Poldark - well, the tv series of Poldark went global overnight and I realised that if I didn’t write a book of Poldark walks, someone else would and I couldn’t have that! Rosamunde Pilcher was brought about by the number of German tourists who visit Cornwall - and are very welcome too. Though obviously we haven’t had many this year…

When it comes to fiction, the idea for HUNGER came from an incident that occurred when I was in the back seat of a friend’s car. Her new boyfriend said something I shan’t repeat but it was very suggestive and he looked back to see my reaction. It made me feel very awkward, and when I was telling the Tooth Fairy about it, some time later, I said, “if this was a novel, he’d be the baddie”. We looked at each other and that was the start of one of the characters. There's a motto to this, of course....!!

I also knew I wanted to draw on particular experiences of my own, as well as that of others, so that created a theme. The planning and plotting took place over many, many breakfasts in Wethers with the Tooth Fairy. A great deal of what we cooked up together (pardon the pun) ended up being removed, but we had great fun and it was lovely to share in the planning.

The idea for my next one, which has a working title of SMELLING THE FUTURE, came about when I was having a drink with a friend soon after Moll died. (Come to think of it, this was the only time since lockdown I’ve been out for a drink. And I used to meet friends in the pub several times a week!) But anyway...

We were sitting outside our local hostelry and, as a Moll Fan, she was devastated and wanted to know what had happened. That grew to telling her about my eventful life during Moll’s reign, and my friend looked at me and said, “This is your next book.”

Pauline is very direct, extremely clever, and is usually right. But in this instance, I thought - oh, no. It seemed too - too personal. But then the more she talked about how I might write it, the more I thought - actually she’s a genius.

So that is how my next idea came about. It's still in the planning stages though I have written a short story about part of it. Whether Pauline is proved to be a genius depends largely on my writing, of course, and how the publishing world might view it. But she’s right, they like stories told from a different angle, so we will see….