P.D. James is famously inspired to conceive her novels by a particular locale. My imagination doesn’t work in the same way. I’m not really a visual thinker, and often I paint in the details of setting after working out the main plot.
So it is with the Lake District Mystery I’m writing at present. It’s not giving the game away to say that Hannah Scarlett and Marc Amos have bought a new house, near Ambleside. But so far, in the first draft, I haven’t described their home in much detail.
I’m hoping that will change now that I have stayed at Pinethwaite, the delightful home of Paul Flint, the bursar of Windermere St Annes School, and his family. The original house was built towards the end of the 19th century, but it has been much changed since then and is now absolutely full of atmosphere. As Geraint Lewis and I shared a glass of wine with Paul after our authors’ evening together, it struck me that the house would be a great place for Hannah to live (especially as Paul is a fan of Hannah’s!)
Next morning I woke to the stillness of a sunny day deep in the Cumbrian countryside. It really was delightful – and, for an author, inspirational too. You can expect to find a version of Pinethwaite, albeit much changed, somewhere in the next Lakes book.
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