My novels are all totally from my imagination… but of course my imagination is fed by things I have experienced, things I have seen and observed, things I have done and read about… But nothing in what I have written is ‘based’ on any real thing. All my characters are just figments of my imagination, although i guess unconsciously I may have included some aspects of real people I have met or known. of all those real people, I guess the person who features most is myself; I think – I know there are aspects of me in many of the main characters in my novels, although never consciously so. I never write an imaginary story about myself.
I have used aspects of my professional life in ‘Flipside’ and ‘Night Vision’ where the main characters are teachers, and I have, like everyone, experienced heartache which informed aspects of the widow in ‘Farholm’, and the spiky, independent and determined character of Tyche Kane in ‘The Stalking of Rosa Czekov’ is maybe how I would like to be! However of all my characters, the one who, strangely, is most like me is the thirty-something ex-solicitor, Thomas Radwinter who is the narrator and main character of my the eponymous Radwinter stories. He’s ginger, chubby, bearded, and a bloke… but he is most like me!
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Lois Elsden 