I shared a very sad post yesterday, and in it I mentioned how I sometimes create characters. I mentioned my favourite and wonderful band, the Mavericks, and how I’d had been inspired by the idea of a group of people who have a close connection with each other over many years. In the case of my story there were six men who were related, twin brothers and their four cousins. The story of the English Portbraddon family had nothing at all to do with bands or music, they were a dentist, a writer, an artist, a teacher and two rather dodgy brothers who floated between various jobs. My story ‘Lucky Portbraddon’, followed their lives after the death of their grandmother, and ended with them getting over their differences and disagreements to save one of them from a dangerous criminal gang, and another from a knife wielding crazy! There had to be a bit of actual action as well as the to-ing and fro-ing of family disputes and falling out.
I’m a great watcher of other people, strangers I see on trains, in cafés, walking past me in the street, in pubs, or characters on TV or in films. For example, in ‘Loving Judah’, the main character – a disgraced policeman, was inspired by a cricketer I saw on TV when my husband was watching the Ashes. It was something in his scowling expression and angry stance – and then his career was cut short by something he did and he became someone in ‘Loving Judah’. Thomas Radwinter, who has “starred” in the eponymous series was a Danish actor I noticed in a gory crime thriller, Thomas’s second wife was a contestant on ‘The Great British Bake-Off’. Going back to the Mavericks, two of them appeared in ‘night vision’… It’s almost as if I have a cast of actors who I can use in different novels as different characters with different personalities and characteristics.
When I write in the first person, the narrator is not based on anyone I know in real life – they are all created by my weird imagination. I say that quite boldly, and then I remember what my cousin said to me after my first Radwinter book. She told me, with an affectionate laugh, that in fact Thomas is me!! But I’m a woman! I was a teacher not a lawyer, I might be a bit chunky but I’m not fat, I’m not ginger and I definitely don’t have a beard! And then… and then, when I thought about it, maybe… maybe, in a way… maybe there’s some truth in it!!! Oh heck! – as Thomas would say!
All my novels are available on Amazon as e-books and as paperbacks:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/stores/Lois-Elsden/author/B007JWXZ9U
PS the bearded gent in my featured image is not Thomas Radwinter, although that watchful expression might be similar, he is – or should I say was, Thomas Wyatt, a most wonderful Elizabethan poet, 1503-1542
Lois Elsden 