WHERE DO YOU GET YOUR IDEAS FROM? Linda Mitchelmore

'Where do you get your ideas from? Oh for a ten pound note for every time I've been asked that. I've now had over 300 short stories published, plus serials, articles, and now my eighth novel is to be published next month. I can't say I've ever analysed where my ideas come from, but for the purposes of this blogpost I thought I'd give it a go. CHRISTMAS AT STRAND HOUSE is set, well, at Christmas. a time for families and friends to get together. What if you have no family? Or friends, only acquaintances? Could you make a happy and memorable Christmas from less than happy circumstances? So I decided to take four disparate characters with nowhere to go and no-one with whom to spend Christmas and over 80,000 words try to knit them together. I'll take Lissy first as the house in the title is now hers, willed to her by her godmother. I am a godmother. A not very good one - two Roberts and an Emily. I often think of them but I'm not the best present buyer and I certainly won't be able to will any of them a house. But a friend of mine was willed the most fabulous house by her godmother and it got me thinking .... how might something like that change your life, especially if you are now on your own, post divorce, and desperate for change? (I've never been divorced but know many who are) It was a bit of a light bulb moment and I thought I might be able to get a book out of it.

So I brought Janey into the equation. Janey is an abused wife and knows she must leave her marriage. I've got to state here that I have never been an abused wife but sadly, I've known those who are/were. More than one has said to me over the years something along the lines of ... 'I'll leave when the children go to senior school/university/get married/when X gets over his illness/the mortgage is paid off'. But they rarely do, because is there ever a right time. I don't think a couple of days before Christmas would be the time that many would choose, but Janey does. She leaves a note for her husband and accepts Lissy's invitation to spend Christmas at Strand House, taking the secret of her abuse and the fact she has run away with her. Next came Bobbie. I have a Facebook friend - Gerri - who puts up the most wonderfully glam and feel-good FB posts - pictures of impossibly slim and beautiful models dressed in clothes and shoes and hats I will never wear. We have bonded in the ether over my love of black and white.

So I decided to counter the sadness of Janey and the blandness of the way she dresses by having Bobbie the absolute opposite. Bobbie is a mature model but she has brought her own secret to the party and over the course of the book she shares it with the others at Strand House. So, I thought three characters would be enough as each has a point of view and I'd need to know their back story, how they speak, how they think. But then I remembered that 'two's company, three's a crowd', and decided to bring a fourth character into the group - Xander. Xander is funny and kind ... and a young widower. (My starting point here was a neighbour widowed far too young and struggling to mourn his wife and move on at the same time) Xander's late wife, Claire, had been childhood friends with Lissy. Janey and Bobbie had met Claire, if briefly, and only have good memories of her. But, as in most marriages, life isn't all sweetness and light, hearts and flowers, and cosy, romantic moments in front of a log fire with a glass of wine and a box of chocolates. Xander has a secret too. And somehow, Claire has wormed her way into this book - not quite the elephant in the room but her absence is affecting them all. So, I had my characters. I had the setting. Over the course of four days they all get to know and like/love one another a lot better. It was fun - well, okay, not fun writing this in the hottest summer we've had for decades- deciding what they would eat, what they would drink, what they would wear, and how their friendships would develop in Strand House, perched as it is on a cliff in coastal Devon. Bring into the equation all the decorations we have at Christmas and the traditions and .... last but not least there is even a sprinkling of snow!

Available as an ebook and in paperback and up on Amazon for pre-order right now!