Sunrise: the promise of a new day
‘The morning steals upon the night / Melting the darkness…’ – Shakespeare, The Tempest
‘The morning steals upon the night / Melting the darkness…’ – Shakespeare, The Tempest
Where does a dream end and reality begin? Can a dream not only come true but be true?
What draws us to the stories and experiences of those who came before us?
If you love English literature, then these places belong on your ‘visit someday’ list…
‘Beauty sleeps on the calm dreamy bosom of the ocean, or lives in the dance of its wild waves.’ – Thomas Clark Henley, ‘Beauty’, 1851
Ten years, many hundreds of blogs exploring my novels. Here are my favourites…
‘For as long as I can remember, art has fired up my imagination. I remember gazing at paintings on the wall in my childhood home for ages, dreaming up stories that would play out in the worlds inside the picture frames. When I wrote my first book, it was natural for me to turn to art for inspiration…’
The new Bibliotheca Alexandrina is a treasure of my birthplace: Alexandria, Egypt. Not only is it beautiful and significant in and of itself, but it commemorates the Great Library of Alexandria built in the 200s BC, one of the most important libraries of all time. How could I fail to be inspired by such devotion to books?
‘It is almost impossible to watch a sunset and not dream,’ said the English philosopher Bernard Williams. I quite agree: for me, the sunset can be so stirring and poignant and romantic.
The day I first visited Cádiz I just knew I must situate a love story there! The Moors compared the city to a ‘dish of silver in a bowl of blue’, so vivid are the colours there. It is a lovely city; the most beautiful in Spain, I think, and so today I want to introduce you to it briefly.
In a modern love story, is there room for a damsel in distress? From where did this trope originate and why has it so endured? Is it okay, in fact, to be in distress and in need of rescue sometimes?
Setting is everything for my fiction, not just the backdrop of the story but where I write – where I dream up the first meeting of two people destined to be soulmates, or a first kiss shared on a moonlit beach, or a sunset framing lovers walking off into their happy-ever-after…
Music is at the heart of my latest novel, Concerto. The hero, Umberto, is a pianist composer who has lost his sight, and consequently his will to compose and play. Enter music therapist Catriona, who will have her work cut out trying to guide this stubborn and depressed man back to the piano, where he belongs.
‘For me, experiencing different cultures and their people is as essential a part of life as reading and writing. That is why all my novels are infused with a passion for travel…’
‘”Ever thine. Ever mine. Ever ours.” This is the kind of intense, enflamed passion that I dreamt of for my novel Concerto…’
‘En la sangre hierve España sin fuego. (In Spain blood boils without fire.) This proverb says it all: Spanish is a land of deep passions, the perfect setting for fiery, dramatic romance…’
‘To write fiction, to express oneself eloquently and with passion, to set down the words in order – that requires triumph over chaos. But more than that, I think writing demands finding a harmonious way of being with chaos…’
‘There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in our philosophy… Is the shore at Lake Como haunted, and if so, by whom? And why: what tragic secret has been buried there?’
‘Two cafés with long and prominent histories, Café de Flore and Les Deux Magots in Paris: inspirational, fascinating and a chance to brush shoulders with the ghosts of the greats…’
‘This is a setting to inspire the artistic soul. Here, at the Villa Melzi d’Eril in Bellagio, Liszt would walk for hours in the surrounding parkland, breathing in the atmosphere, letting his muse take in the stunning views and hear the music in the air…’
Have you heard of the term duende? The Oxford English Dictionary defines duende as ‘a quality of passion and inspiration’. The word is used to describe a state of heightened emotion, authenticity and expression, and it is commonly associated with flamenco. The soul in the singer’s cry, the feeling etched into the dancer’s face, the power in the guitarist’s playing – that is duende.
The most romantic day of the year is tomorrow. What have you got planned?
For me, editing an upcoming novel means spending many hours in my office: door closed, lamps lit, music playing. The latter is always carefully selected to match the mood of the book I am editing, and while editing Concerto one composer in particular featured prominently in my playlist, Frédéric Chopin.
‘True love stories never have endings.’ So wrote American author Richard Bach.
‘[H]e’s more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.’ So said Cathy of Heathcliff in Emily Brontë’s classic novel Wuthering Heights.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791) was, without doubt, one of the greatest composers to have ever lived. In his short life he composed more than 600 works, many of which continue to be performed by musicians today. His music is popular the world over, and in the most recent poll for Classic FM’s Hall of Fame (2019), three of his pieces featured in the top-twenty list. Here is his most popular work on the list, the Clarinet Concerto in A Major.
‘Inspiration strikes’ is a common term, and as a writer, I understand why. Once you let writing into your life, your imagination is always active, always open, and sometimes out of nowhere an idea comes to you, like a bolt from the blue. Invariably, this happens when you are doing something completely unrelated to writing – cooking, bathing, walking.
‘If there’s a book that you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.’
My new novel, Concerto, is set on Lake Como. There, music therapist Catriona comes to Villa Monteverdi to work with Umberto, a pianist composer who has lost his sight, and his will to compose.
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