The Writer’s Lantern in Shadowed Corridors

 

Good evening my lovelies, can you believe it’s mid January already? Gosh where has the time gone? Come in, close the door, and what do you fancy to drink? I’m having a glass of Provençal rose, nicely chilled. I hope you’ve had a lovely New Year and have settled back into the new routine. I’ve been busy with the edits for the new book, which is coming soon, more about that later.

Settle in, pull up a chair, ignore Lady Cora, she’s been mischievous all day cackling at the corvids and grinning for the dreamies.

Lanterns and Shadows

The scriptorium has been a hive of activity between rewrites and edits, and broody vampires giving opinions on past regrets. Seriously though I have been busy with the rewrite and outlining a new book.

As a chronic insomniac I write a lot at night, particularly the darker scenes that I put the characters through.

During the witching hour at 3:00 AM the lanterns are lit and cast long shadows around the scriptorium where the characters linger and whisper to the final crescendo of the epic soundtrack that is playing in the background.

Whispers Between the Shelves

It’s not just my books that whisper between the shelves. The books that I use to research, the characters that reside between those pages, oh they have a lot to say. Have you ever wondered what life was really like back in Ancient Rome? During the Renaissance? Perhaps what it was like to take a walk along the canal bank in Amsterdam during the darkest of winter in 1770?

I do, all the time. I have little mementoes from places I have visited on the bookshelves, but one item in particular, and it happens to be one of my faves, and one that caused my imagination to rev up into overdrive. That is a lithograph of Albrecht Durer, the influential German painter, and printmaker.

The face looking Back

I had no idea at the time who it was but the face was strong, and fascinating. Commanded your attention. It was his eyes though, that really drew one in. They seemed to follow you, and his mouth appeared to be curled into a wry smile.

My first impression was that this man was cruel, and dangerous.

During one of those bewitching sojourns in the middle of the night that I gazed upon the lithograph, that the image reminded me of my villain, whom I had been writing early last year and whom I shall introduce in a book later this year. 

The Secret the eyes Keep

For me it was all about the eyes. He had the most expressive eyes, very intense as if they held the weight of secrets so powerful and so wicked, that to be gazed upon by them might shatter one’s resolve and send one flying muttering an incantation down the hallowed hallways of the Militiverse.

As I said earlier, at the time I picked up the lithograph I had no idea it was Albrecht and if I had would it have changed the fact, that that particular image became the inspiration for one of my fave future characters. Yes, the villain is so villainous he’s fantastic. LOL, I am such a tease.

So, my friends, thank you for sharing this evening with me, keep warm, keep alert, for you never know what is waiting in the shadows or what might just jump out at you and grasp your imagination.

Talk soon

Anna xoxo