I see to be collecting faces at the moment… an obituary last week, and a girl at a gig last night. Most of the characters in my books start as random faces that spring into my mind from no particular inspiration and with no connection to a real person; sometimes they are amalgams of people I’ve seen, hardly ever people I know in real life… in fact I can only think of one, and that is Sandi in ‘Loving Judah’ who looks a little like my friend Wendy… although I don’t think Wendy ever fell in love with a vicar!
However, just occasionally I see a person either passing by, or among a crowd or in a pub or on TV or a picture of someone in a newspaper or magazine, and that face gradually morphs into a character, sometimes years later! Occasionally I have a character without a face and I then start scanning wherever I go, looking for the right face! I once spent months looking for a man to become Sholto, a villain in ‘A Strong Hand From Above’; we were in a pub in Surrey and there was a loud and very posh but very uncouth man on the next table. He was about thirty, had pale yellow trousers, very shiny tan shoes and a tweedy jacket… very expensive clothes.. he had dark blond hair which was pulled back and tied in a silly little pony-tail. I think it was the pony-tail which did it, I had found Sholto!
Last night my husband was playing a gig with his band, the Sabres and I was standing at the opposite end of the room, watching them. I noticed a woman sitting nearby, laughing with some friends. She had such an attractive, lively face, full of character; she was quite pale-skinned, with white hair (it may have been bleached… I couldn’t very well ask her!) her hair was cut very short at the back and sides but was longer on top and ruffled and spiked and wild. She had a very determined chin, she was certainly someone who would stand up for herself! I’m not sure what age she was, maybe forty-ish, maybe fifty-ish but she and her friends were having a good time, taking photos of each other and chatting to people passing by to get to the bar. She stood up and I realised she was quite tall, maybe 5’8″, slim, and dressed in black. She had a tattoo across her shoulders, it looked like wavy lines, maybe leaves, I couldn’t really tell, and she had another tattoo on her wrist going down onto the back of her hand.
I’ve found Ruthie! I thought to myself, or maybe Ruthie’s sister. Ruthie is a character in a novel I’m writing at the moment, about the Radwinter family… and what I have just realised is that in June I wrote about having a heroine with white or grey hair:
http://loiselden.com/2013/06/06/going-grey/
Lois Elsden 