These days, I mostly write here in the evening, sometimes reflecting on what I’ve done during the day, sometimes writing about some stray thought which has passed through my mind, sometimes – having had an inspiration during the day, I’ll write about that. Sometimes I’m reminded of something and will repost something I’ve shared before – I started writing here in 2012, so there’s plenty of history to replay, my first ever story was posted on 14th March to be precise! Sometimes I sit for a while before I start writing, and sometimes it takes a few sentences before I properly launch into my story! This is actually very much how I write my books anyway, although with those stories, once I’m a few pages in, they run like a film in my head!
Sometimes I sit down to write and know pretty much what I’m going to write, sometimes I have an empty head, and may start off with some waffle before a light switches on and I properly begin. I decided earlier what I was going to write – triggered by something I’d seen earlier, and a “conversation” on-line which I’d taken part in. I was going to write about my favourite singer and inspiration for several of my characters, the singer and driving force in The Mavericks, Raul Malo.
I first came across the band in a shop selling CDs, and I saw the cover of one showing four men staring at the camera expressionlessly. I had no idea who they were, and the listing of their songs rang no bells – although on reflection one might have been a number my husband’s band performed. It was their faces, the intriguing thoughts of who they might be, which prompted me to by the CD. The band was The Mavericks, and they literally changed my life – I’m not joking, they changed my life.
I fell in love with them, played the album endlessly, bought their other albums, and – of course- eventually got to see them in Liverpool. That was the beginning – of finding new friends, of going on adventures to every corner of the United Kingdom – to Belfast, to Glasgow, to Cardiff, to many towns and cities in England. What adventures we had, what laughs, what excitement, what friendship, I met two of my best best friends through the band. There were ups and downs – when the band split for a while, but those friendships maintained, and we were ready when they reunited and began to tour again.
Then… disaster… after a courageous and public fight against cancer, the main man, Raul Malo died. I met Raul several times, I bought him a Highland Park whisky on a fabulous night in Glasgow, he was my constant inspiration in many ways. So this evening I sat down to write with no thoughts in my head, as I described in the first paragraph here, and somehow, as it often happens, my thoughts turned to me finding a CD by a band I didn’t know, I connected with the image on the cover, and the rest as they say is…
Lois Elsden 