TLG Blogpalooza: A Little Bit Whimsical?

Happy Tuesday, everyone! I'm very pleased to say that we have over two hundred entries into the giveaway already. Many are multiples, of course, but it's still very cool!

Now onto today's post:

I get asked about the inspirations and influences behind THE LOST GIRL all the time, and I thought it was about time I talked about the latter. I've mentioned FRANKENSTEIN several times, which isn't surprising considering that's the story I stole the bones from and went on to add my own flesh (not literally) to. And, of course, as the book's inspiration, it's certainly influenced it. 

But I'm not going the FRANKENSTEIN route today. Instead, today's teaser is going to be me talking about what you can expect from the book; basically, talking about two people (well, their work) that influenced not what story is, but how it's told.

Tim Burton
I'm going to say this just once and then resist the urge to gush like a fangirl: I love Tim Burton. (I also love Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter too, incidentally, so when you throw the three of them together (as they often are), it's like Christmas for me.) I love (almost) everything he's ever done. And when the first little twiglets of THE LOST GIRL started sprouting in my head, and Eva started talking to me, it was Tim Burton I thought of. 

Think about Edward Scissorhands (which probably owes a great deal to FRANKENSTEIN too!). A sad, lonely boy with scissors instead of hands, created almost from scratch by the man he considers his father? That's creepy, but cool. Whimsical. Eerie without being grisly. And think about Corpse Bride. An awkward young man accidentally marries a sweet dead girl. It's sad, touching, eerie. 

I guess that's what I wanted to create with THE LOST GIRL: something eerie, something sad, something whimsical. (I don't know about how well I succeeded, if at all. That's for you to tell me.)

Daphne du Maurier
I talk about her all the time, so if you're a frequent visitor to the blog, you may well be sick to death of be going on and on about how much I love some of her books. They're full of some of the most beautiful, lyrical, poignant, gorgeous writing I've ever read. I don't think I could never write as wonderfully as that, and truthfully I wouldn't want to copy anyone else's style, but I will say that that's where my love of reading (and writing) beautiful words has come from.

Also, almost all of her books (that I've read) have made me cry. I didn't deliberately set out to make anyone cry when I wrote THE LOST GIRL, but I did want readers to feel the way I felt when I read Frenchman's Creek or The King's General. I wanted them, quite simply, to feel.

TEASE OF THE DAY

No quotes today. Instead, the most beautiful things arrived last week, and we're two weeks from pub day, so I just had to show them off instead! 

 

Inspired

Just a quick one today. Thank you so much to everyone who dropped by to play my let's-inspire-Sangu game yesterday! Not only were your suggestions an eye-opener (bubblologist? Really? Bobbydazzler?), but I've got so many great images in my head now, for characters and for settings. 

I don't have a new story yet, but I can feel little sparks of it shooting up and I'm trying to snatch them! So thank you all for that, you've given me so many amazing ideas!

Now I'm off to scribble...

Flip a Coin

Chance. Luck. Destiny. Whatever you want to call it. Whether or not you believe in fate, I don't think most of us can deny that chance plays an enormous role in our lives. Sometimes, the element of chance is downright ridiculous.

For instance, Steve and me. We're together because that's who we are, it's how we wanted it, we made moves, etc etc. But we wouldn't even have met if it hadn't been for a ridiculously long and convoluted string of coincidences and twists of fate. For instance, what if either of us had decided not to go to Lancaster University? What if we had ended up in different colleges/flats? I only met Steve, properly, because he and I ended up, coincidentally, living together in my second year of university. And this only happened because he happened to be friends with Lindsey, who was my friend too.

What if, gasp, Lindsey had gone somewhere else? Picked a different college to live in? Not happened to meet me at someone else's party? Not happened to end up living, coincidentally, in a flat where several of Steve's friends lived (which is how she met him in our first year, leading to us living together in our second)?

It's a mess, isn't it? And it's also slightly unnerving to think of how easily we could have missed one another.

I think the same holds true for writing. Sure, it's about hard work and talent. But the element of luck is so strong in writing. What if you didn't happen to see that bird that sparked off the idea behind your bestseller? What if you didn't bump into that woman with the hooked nose who inspired your award-winning villain? I always feel that almost all ideas and stories are inspired by luck, by circumstances. Even ones that are retold.

And on the publishing front, what if you catch an agent on a really bad day, and a query that he/she would otherwise have loved, simply goes rejected?

It makes me reel ever so slightly, thinking about luck.

So how has the random, pure, ridiculous element of chance irrevocably changed your life or writing?

Pretty things!

I like pretty things. I'm not ashamed to admit that. I like things that look lovely, or interesting, or gorgeous, or just plain pretty - largely because of the way things like that, beautiful and interesting things, inspire me to write, inspire stories, and just offer me some neat eye candy.

For instance, I love this dress. And I love beautiful cities:

  

And I love the countryside. Steve lives in East Anglia, and I'm here visiting for a while. Let me just say, the countryside's gorgeous. I mean, I love the Lancashire countryside too, with its craggy hills and low stone hedges, but this is different: flat land, soft fields, sunsets.

Do beautiful things inspire you?


On the subject of blog awards, Bridge Marie gave me this one. Yay, thank you! 

So, of course, I'm passing it on to a couple of people - to Steve, to Alesa, and to India - all of whom have been brilliant at supporting the blog and critiquing my writing. There are loads of others who have been brilliant too, and I hope you all know how much I appreciate your comments on the blog and how wonderful I think you all are!

Does love ever die?

To follow on from two recent posts, I thought I'd talk about new music that's helped me get a better handle on the tone and mood of my works-in-progress. 

I'm obsessed with musicals. I'm not kidding about this, some might argue it's a clinical, fundamental kind of obsession. My mother is hugely musical, and her love of musicals crept into the womb and into my childhood. While I can't sing a note, I'm more than happy to run through entire musicals anyway. My favourite is Jesus Christ Superstar, followed closely by Les Miserables and The Phantom of the Opera, both tied in second place. Wicked comes in at third, missing the cut to second place only because I like fewer actual songs. I think I know every word of Jesus Christ Superstar, and most from Les Mis and Phantom. I know I've certainly driven poor Steve mad because I've often started singing a musical from beginning to end, and refused to stop.

Which makes it rather astonishing that it was only about a week ago when, courtesy of my mother of course, I found out about Love Never Dies, the sequel to The Phantom of the Opera. I downloaded the album yesterday, started listening to it, and bam! Musical inspiration.

It was rather funny, actually. Because all those scenes that had been writing themselves in my head? Well, when I started listening to 'Beneath a Moonless Sky', I sort of jerked upright and thought but this is just what I was thinking about earlier, about [insert my main characters' names here].


Other recent musical inspiration: 'Another Heart Calls' by the All-American Rejects, 'All The Right Moves' by One Republic and the music from the Doctor Who episode 'End of Time' (the bit where the Master saves the Doctor. Sorry if I just spoiled that for you.)


Any suggestions? What do you listen to when you need inspiration?

Setting the Scene... to music

I'm not the first writer to confess that music helps me write, nor will I be the last. I'll admit that there are times when I want/need nothing more than silence to be able to concentrate on a particularly difficult scene. More often than not, however, a particular song or piece of music will do wonders in helping me set the tone and mood of a scene. And tone and mood is so important to me... I can't write if either feels flat.

For instance, while writing ECHOES, there's a certain 'death scene' towards the end of the novel (no, I will not be mentioning who, what, when or how). And listening to Snow Patrol's 'Run' was absolutely perfect. Admittedly, writing the scene made me tear up anyway, but the song just amplified the mood and helped me construct the words better. I think. 

Then there are the faster, quicker-paced scenes, and listening to Michael Jackson's 'Smooth Criminal' made a particular one flow so much better than if I had written it to silence, or to any other kind of music. 

Of course, ninety per cent of the time, instrumental music works so much better for me than songs with lyrics, just because the lyrics in the latter can distract me from what I'm actually writing about, and the next thing I know, I've branched off from a poignant, tender love scene to something vaguely drug-related. Uh-huh. What a mess. I know. On the instrumental front, I love Immediate Music, Hans Zimmer pieces, Audiomachine... yikes, this list could go on.

So, for anyone who might be curious today, here's some of the music I listened to while writing ECHOES. (Hopefully, one day, people might get to read the book and it might then be clearer where each song fits in. Until then, or if that never happens, think of this as a glimpse into what went on behind the scenes, while the book unfolded.)

1.        Cinema Bizarre – Forever or Never

2.       Michael Jackson – Beat It

3.       Iron Maiden – Fear of the Dark

4.      Coldplay – Fix You

5.       AFI – This Time Imperfect

6.      Missy Higgins – Where I Stood

7.       Apocalypta – I Don’t Care

8.      Michael Jackson – Smooth Criminal

9.      Snow Patrol – Set the Fire to the Third Bar

10.    Madonna – This Used to Be My Playground

11.     Damien Rice – 9 Crimes

12.    Globus – Orchard of Mines

13.    Declan Flynn – Ease My Pain

14.    Evanescence – Before the Dawn

15.    Audiomachine – House of Cards (No Choir)

16.    Paramore – We Are Broken

17.    Red – Start Again

18.    Snow Patrol – Run

19.    Within Temptation – Angels

20.   Queen – Who Wants to Live Forever

On a further music note, I've just gotten obsessed with Simian Mobile Disco's 'Audacity of Huge'. Thanks for that, Steve.