Inspirational Places

I received an email from Amazon this morning inviting me to rate 'Billy and the Carinthean War'. As tempting as it is to give it five stars, I shall resist. Not least because I suspect they might realise it's me and get rather cross about an author so obviously boosting their own rating.

I thought it might be a good idea to offer an insight into how these stories come into being:

Many of my stories come from inspirational places. The Boldre Wood Trilogy is a case in point: Billy's story was inspired by childhood trips to the New Forest. The name Boldre actually comes from the area, though the story is not set there. I remember being fascinated by the idea of a forest made up of boulders - I was young, I didn't pay attention to the spelling back then. The forest of boulders idea was ditched as unworkable, but the name stuck.

A recent foray to the National Trust property, Packwood House, saw us climbing the spiral path to the yew tree on the Mount. It was one of those surprise discoveries. We saw the array of clipped yew trees and decided to explore and before we knew what was happening we were climbing up and up until we found ourselves at the top of the Mount beneath the dome of a very large, and presumably very old, yew. It had the feel of an Enid Blyton adventure, I was half expecting to emerge in some mystical, magical new world. It's not hard to see how such places could inspire fairy tales.

Watch this space, perhaps there'll be a new adventure story emerging shortly. For now, work continues on the third anthology.

K.