My stories and adventures are all completely imaginary; my characters might in appearance be based on some person I’ve seen on tv or on a bus or in the street, but their personalities and traits are invented and certainly the extraordinary things which befall them, as well as their complicated relationships are all imaginary figments. However, sometimes things happen in real life – on the news, or in the newspapers, or with people I know, which my tales seem to have foreshadowed but which are, in fact, complete coincidence.
This is part of the reason, that even after the book has ended, my characters keep on with their lives in my head. In one story, two people, in their after-book life, go travelling for a year or so. Another two in a different book have no more connections, although they do bump into each other from time to time because they live in the same area. A third pair end up together with a child called Rufus! When I start writing, I usually have a trigger for the story, but I’m as surprised as anyone how it all develops, and I definitely have no idea where it’s going and what secrets may be revealed or relationships change, or alarming events occur.
At the moment something is happening, reported on the news, and aspects of it are echoed in a couple of my stories, as well as one I have been planning for some time. This is more than uncomfortable for me, this is really quite unsettling. I can’t do anything about what I’ve already written, and probably no-one else but me would notice these echoes because in fact they are very generalised and non-specific. Also I would have had to be clairvoyant to have “used” these story-lines. But what about the story, half-written which I have been planning for several years – not my Radwinter stories, I hasten to add, they are complete inventions (although I’ve used the appearance of real people as models for the Radwinter brothers). The story I’m referring to is set in the very early 1950’s and the main character is based in looks and other aspects on a real person – and I did tell them all about their fictional alter-ego. For various reasons, finishing this story will be delayed, but at some point I will complete it, and no doubt I will write about it here.
In the mean time, tonight I shall taking John le Carré to bed with me – as well as my husband of course!
My featured image is of the poet Thomas Wyatt, an extraordinary man. My Thomas Radwinter looked nothing like him in my first Radwinter book, but thinking about it now, my Thomas has lost a lot of weight, is older, and has become less silly and ridiculous, so may in fact be morphing (in appearance only) into a Thomas Wyatt look-alike.
Lois Elsden 