Journeys with invisible friends

I've just come back from the Farm Shop. A dreary morning, wet and misty, but clouds of blackthorn blossom can be seen in the otherwise bare hedges. This morning I was aware of someone else travelling with me; a character from an earlier book which is always exciting. This is not a new experience; as a child I was conscious of other travellers from that parallel universe which was much easier to enter then than it is now. In the car, on moors and beaches, back then I didn't question the presence of these travellers.


These days I am more pragmatic: I use them as characters. They drift into my thoughts bringing with them their own stories and landscapes. Not for me the choice of where to set a book! They give me glimpses - the sea, the moor, a river - and then I go to look for them. When I find them I know at once: their voices are clearer, small scenes are played out, the air fizzes with excitement.


It's not easy writing a book which includes characters from previous books. I held Jolyon Chadwick off for two books while he waited patiently until there was no-one else to write about. The problem is the question of balance. Too much information and old readers become bored, too little and new readers are puzzled and confused. In the end 'The Prodigal Wife' worked itself out - and it's interesting to travel again with these people, discovering through their thoughts what has been happening to them and listening in to their conversations.
One day the men in the white coats will come and then, maybe, I shall have my head to myself!

More books

Are we defined by what we read? I have three reading stations - kitchen, sitting room, bedroom - and books are piled beside chairs, on window sills, on tables. A quick tally of my winter reading:


U A Fanthorpe: Collected Poems
David Mitchell: Ghostwritten
Hilary Mantel: Wolf Hall
Janice Elliot: The Sadness of Witches
David Nicholls: One day
Arthur Ransome: Great Northern
Jane Gardam: the Man in the Wooden Hat
Joanna Trollope: Friday Nights
James Long: Knowing Max
The Duchess of Devonshire's biography: Wait for Me
Nancy Mitford: Love in a Cold Climate
Thich Nhat Hanh: Peace is every Step
Susan Hill: Howard's End is on the Landing
Margary Allingham: The Mind Readers
Susan Howatch: Penmarric
Gillian Clarke: At the Source
Daphne du Maurier: the Parasites
Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Notes from Prison
Alan Coren: Chocolate and Cuckoo Clocks
Henri Nouwen: The Return of the Prodigal Son


And so on. I hate the prospect of libraries closing. Reading was my apprenticeship to writing and I owe our great British Libraries a huge debt.As I moved around the country as a naval wife, my first question in a new town was not 'Where's the supermarket?' but 'Where's the library?'


I am addicted to the written word.It never occurred to me, during all those years of reading, that one day I should earn a living from other people with a similar addiction!

Switching Off

There are times after I have spent a day writing when it seems impossible to switch off my head. Words, words, words: forming and reforming until they are driving me mad.

Thank heavens then for Tom Barnaby and his merry team - Midsome Murders is one of the few programmes on television that actually help you to relax. So, just how would you describe this series? This is off the top of my head but I think I would say it is accessible, bizarre, colourful, dramatic, entertaining  fun, genial, humourous, improbable, jolly, kinky, laughable, merry, nonsensical, obvious, quaint, risible, scenic, trite, undemanding, vivid, extraordinary and zany.

Sorry there is no 'Y' (if you can think of one, please let me know) and I cheated a bit with 'X'.

Now Reading

Once I am writing - rather than planning or researching - finding the right things to read becomes very difficult. Poetry and biographies fill the addiction for the written word but novels by good writers either fill me with despair and envy or absorb me so completely that I 'lose the plot' with my own work! Hurrah then for Michael Mayne's Learning to Dance. What an amazing book I have just finished the first section, 'January', and I simply love the opening quote from Alexander Pope......

True ease in writing comes from art, not chance,

As those move easiest who have learned to dance.