Thoughts for the new book are coming together.
I feel like a detective placing clues on a board. Some shout louder than others but somewhere in what I am looking at, a storyline is emerging. The legend of the Fox Spirit is whispering particularly loudly. Readers might remember her appearance in The Shifu Cloth. …
I’ve been pinning for 12 months-ish. I had thought that it might just be a fad for me, perhaps even a fad for the world at large.
But not so.
The participation levels are huge, my own involvement at least every second or third evening when I’m busy, every evening if I’m not.
*A sample of the book to be published in full for e-book and POD in August-September 2011*
Chapter Nine
Lalita
‘Little damsel, you must eat something or at least drink. You cannot go on like this.’ The afrit pleaded with her but she had only a care beyond reason for the quality of her work, not for herself, refusing the trays of delectables the Other laid out.
Seeing as I’m about to start putting up the novel, A Thousand Glass Flowers on Mesmered, I thought readers might like to know how the story came about.
I’m always inspired by small things. In fact I think my writing has its very own god… The God of Small Things. The Stumpwork Robe and The Last Stitch were inspired by beautiful embroidery that has its roots in the seventeenth century. Another work-in-progress, The Shifu Cloth has its genesis in the fascinating fabric created in Japan through the centuries and which is in fact called ‘shifu’ cloth. And of course, A Thousand Glass Flowers was conceived from a paperweight. In each case a novel grew from small things. In every case the small things guarded dangerous secrets.
This is the magnificent design of the eldritch robe from the book The Stumpwork Robe.
Pat Sweet has been itching to design the robe ever since she read the book almost two years ago, claiming that as a former costume designer, it fired her imagination. The woman modelling the gown is Ana, who you would know well from reading the book.
Inspiration is, to an artist, the air we breathe. It sustains us, suffusing us with ideas. I’ve talked before about the things that inspire me to write a story . . . a piece of stitching, a paperweight, a length of cloth, a pocket globe. Once in the distant past it was a tiny brass ball I found in my grandfather’s tool shed (which I’ve since lost, but imagine the quidditch snitch and you can see what I mean). Heavens’ knows what Pa’s little brass ball was. Whatever it was, more than anything it was inspiration.
I’m about to start working on the work in progress at last. ( what else would you do but work on a WIP) And in trying to make contact with my muse and to gain inspiration, I’ve spent hours looking at books, photos and the internet. I’ve spoken in other blogs about the strange places I find my inspiration, places like the wonderful French haberdasher’s Sajou. And now I have just been given a link by a friend and it is so beautifully astonishing that I know I’m going to get heaps of ideas from it. The site is www.architecturalwatercolours.com and under the section called Notecards and within the sub-section labelled Chinoiserie is the most stunning collection of the fantastic and the real in Asian inspired architecture.
Sometimes the oddest things inspire, arriving in one’s life at just the right time. I’m working on the first draft of a fantasy fiction at the moment, entitled The Shifu Cloth. Part of it takes place in a Far Eastern inspired country called The Han. My female protagonist, Isabella, meets a character at the time of the Lantern Festival which heralds Spring. And I wondered what this character should look like . . . clothes, mannerisms etc. I had done much research on China and Japan but the research pressed no buttons. And then my dearest embroidery friend gave me a notebook (see left) and suddenly my dilemma was solved. This was my character . . . except in the story, I have given him glasses. He needed to appear myopic and studious, as well as inscrutable and I’ve always liked the way occasionally light shines on rimless spectacles, effectively blocking out eye expression.
