I spent the first eighteen years of my life in an Essex village. Everyone knew everyone. In the graveyard at St Mary’s church on one side of the village green, the same names appeared on the gravestones. On the other side, the Baptist Church (still referred to as the Chapel by many of the older residents) had replaced the original tabernacle in the Sixties, but when I was little, child-related activities were held in what was essentially a hut on stilts.
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Flushed With Success
One of the most common questions asked of authors is this:
“Where do you get your ideas from?”
From my actual life, is the answer.
When all my children were still at primary school, I helped to run an ambitious Christingle. We had around twenty-five angels of varying sizes, seven Wise Men, eight shepherds, an innkeeper and the Holy Family, comprising Mary and Joseph plus the Baby Jesus played by somebody’s doll. At the dress rehearsal, there was a punch-up between the innkeeper and one of the shepherds. Central Casting (me) had forgotten that they loathed each other. A wrangler was appointed for each people group to ensure there was no recurrence of violence. Nits broke out amongst the heavenly host. There was a lot of scratching.
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A Good Clear Out
This month marks the fifth birthday of the publication of my first novel, The Diary of Isabella M Smugge. I made her up as a joke for a blog I wrote in April 2020, sick of people on Instagram banging on about baking banana bread, living their best lives, making memories and doing Joe Wicks every morning. There was a point when I was publishing four blogs a month. I was rarely stuck for ideas. Fifty-four years of life experience and obsessive reading had filled up the header tank in my brain to the very brim.
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