Anniversaries & Imagination

Its the last forty minutes of my thirty-eighth wedding anniversary. This precise time, all those years ago I was dancing with my newly married husband, Michael, to the last few slow dances of an amazing day. Neither of us could ever have imagined the route both our lives, and our marriage has taken. Our paths have intertwined across the years, our love growing deeper.  It might even make a good book! But then most of it already has. My writing involves my imagination, but it also includes the places we have been, the activities we have done, the people we have met. Many of those elements are woven into my books.

Lets consider the current two picture books due out in the next few weeks. Shea Pingle and the Swarm launches this Saturday at Westgate Galleria. 'Don't be stupid' I can hear someone scoff, there's no fairies with wings in your life. No, I wish there were, for I have a huge phobia of bees and having someone around like Shea would have settled my racing heart so many times. Above bees, I'm totally terrified of wasps. Shea Pingle is the ultimate heroine in my world. My imagination creates heroes.

Next up will be my third picture book, Timmy and his Magic Toe Beans, just in time for Christmas. Again I can hear someone mutter, 'there's no magic toe beans,' but that's where you are wrong. Timmy does exist, and toe beans too. Timmy was the name of my beloved first cat, a white tabby. I decided to resurrect his spirit by using his name. The character of Timmy is in fact my latest cat, Kipper. A recently adopted stray who lived under the chicken house next door. (Not Chicken Wizard's origins, but my own chickens - a story for another day.) Kipper's toes are what inspired me to write this picture book due out November 30th at Monty's in Birchington. My kipper has a perfectly round  black spot on his paw. What else can it be but magic?

A whole host of my family pets feature throughout my work. From Halo, another current moggie, to Widgett, also known as the dimension shifting cat, Tenamunday  in my Witch on the Warpath trilogy. The blackbird fledgling, Billy Big-Beak Blackbird,  I hand-reared during lockdown ended up as a member of the Royal Air Court in Quest for Courage. And that's just some of the animals that feature. People, places, buildings, careers, hobbies, equipment, machines, transport, weapons the list is endless of the actual everyday elements of my life, and that of my husband and son which I weave into my worlds.

Thus far I haven't included an anniversary setting, let alone a thirty-eighth one in any of my works, but I always keep my mind open to the possibility.

This is the essence of imagination.

Please feel free to make a comment, who knows it might end up in a future book.