Power of the Imagination

Yesterday the Cariad Chapter of the Romantic Novelists’ Association did a Zoom workshop with the lovely Jenny Kane, with a lot of fun exercises to kick start the writer’s imagination in difficult times.  One of the things Jenny said, among a lot of useful stuff and laughter, was that your imagination has no limits. Shortly after the end of the workshop I began  reading a new book on the Kindle – a new old book, actually, but you know what I mean! Anyway, the introduction of the Dorothy L Sayers Golden Age crime that I have just started to re-read  – Whose Body? – mentioned that Sayers was hard up when she wrote the book and very much enjoyed endowing Lord Peter with a fortune, and then spending it for him, including a luxury flat in Piccadilly, and a smart wardrobe. She recommended this inexpensive course of action to those also hard up. 

I am certainly doing that at the moment. I conveniently made the hero of the first Riviera book a billionaire, which comes in very handy when sorting out a lot of situations now he is the boss of the family detective agency. Money does talk, and he’s funding a lot of the action in Riviera 2 which is very convenient for an author. I’ve got my characters into some sticky places, and it is very useful to have Jake around to bail me out where necessary. I understand exactly what Sayers meant about enjoying spending his money!The hero of the book, on the other hand does not have much money … but that’s all part of the story …

In what I hope will be Riviera 3, there is an inheritance …

Imagination is also playing a part, at the moment, in travel. Yesterday, doing what I hope are the last round of personal edits, before the book gets submitted to the publishers (Nail biting time)  I was in Bath and Bristol. By the end of the week I will be in Nice, and then Paris. And all without moving from the house.

Books take you places, as a writer and a reader. And at the moment, we need that.