Yesterday the Cariad Chapter of the Romantic Novelists' Association did a Zoom workshop with the lovely Jenny Kane, with a lot of fun exercises to kick start the writer's imagination in difficult times. One of the things Jenny said, among a lot of useful stuff and laughter, was that your imagination has no limits. Shortly after the end of the workshop I began reading a new book on the Kindle - a new old book, actually, but you know what I mean! Anyway, the introduction of the Dorothy L Sayers Golden Age crime that I have just started to re-read - Whose Body? - mentioned that Sayers was hard up when she wrote the book and very much enjoyed endowing Lord Peter with a fortune, and then spending it for him, including a luxury flat in Piccadilly, and a smart wardrobe. She recommended this inexpensive course of action to those also hard up.
I am certainly doing that at the moment. I conveniently made the hero of the first Riviera book a billionaire, which comes in very handy when sorting out a lot of situations now he is the boss of the family detective agency. Money does talk, and he's funding a lot of the action in Riviera 2 which is very convenient for an author. I've got my characters into some sticky places, and it is very useful to have Jake around to bail me out where necessary. I understand exactly what Sayers meant about enjoying spending his money!The hero of the book, on the other hand does not have much money ... but that's all part of the story ...
In what I hope will be Riviera 3, there is an inheritance ...
Imagination is also playing a part, at the moment, in travel. Yesterday, doing what I hope are the last round of personal edits, before the book gets submitted to the publishers (Nail biting time) I was in Bath and Bristol. By the end of the week I will be in Nice, and then Paris. And all without moving from the house.
Books take you places, as a writer and a reader. And at the moment, we need that.
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