Sometimes a news article will spark my curiosity, sometimes an overheard conversation touches me, or it might simply be a shared human experience that I want to capture into words. But an idea won’t go anywhere if a character doesn’t turn up to take the story on. Or is it the other way around? It is the combination of character and idea that sets the story on its way. And this often feels like happenstance and intention at the same time!

summer circles

An article in The Guardian about the terrible persecution of people with albinism in Tanzania shocked and moved me. As so often happens when a subject catches your heart, I kept bumping into examples of people with this condition in Western literature and film – without exception portrayed negatively. At the time I was interested in exploring the periods of change that people go through in life and what prompts them to move away from what has held them there before. With my sunny character, Hannah, I found I could do this and in a very small way, address this imbalance for those with albinism.

never stop looking

The BBC series, Missing, ran for a number of years in the early 2000’s. It went behind the scenes of the Missing Persons Unit as they looked at UK cases. What struck me time and again, was the heart-breaking bewilderment and impotence of the family and friends left behind. Many said the disappearance was unexpected, uncharacteristic and, looking back, there were no signs of why this person might seemingly just disappear.

Part of life is to suffer loss – we lose contact with friends, a dream fails, a relationship ends, a loved one dies. We have to make sense of it somehow, through the pain and grief and sadness but sometimes we become stuck – out of fear or guilt or because we don’t have the answers we need. I wanted to explore what might cause someone to become – and remain – stuck, and what they might draw on to finally move forward.

the other lover

I was interested in those moments in life when you make a big decision – one that might throw everything up in the air! – and which could be the best you ever made or might not … But you have no way of telling until the decision is made, until you are living with whatever comes afterwards.

One of the things I enjoy about reading, is that you can have those adventures, explore other lives and different ways of living; you can think, what would I have done in their shoes?, without actually having to do it in real life!

laughing as they chased us

Someone I knew was full of their travelling experiences – and although they talked so passionately, I couldn’t help thinking what about the enriching possibilities of knowing a place intimately, intensely? That seemed as exciting and unknown to me. I have moved home a lot. I find it difficult to answer the commonly asked question: ’Where do you come from?’ I wanted to explore that idea of what it means to live deep in a place, and to want to be elsewhere.