Mary Nichols | Finding Inspiration

I am often asked where I get the inspiration for my books, but perhaps inspiration is not the most apt word. It is often a process of one thing leading to another.  It might begin with something I’ve read, a tale someone has told me, a newspaper article or a TV programme which attracts my attention. I keep thinking about, adding to the original thread in my mind, discarding other threads, working on the plot and characters until it cries out to be written down.

For instance, just after WW2, my mother worked in a home for unmarried mothers. The girls (some of them very young) were taken there a few weeks before the birth to have their babies who were then taken away for adoption. A week or two later they were sent home and expected to get on with their lives as if nothing had happened. I wondered how the poor mothers must have felt. Could that be a basis for a story? What if my heroine was married to a serviceman who was away fighting in France in the Great War? What if she fell in love with someone else? What if he, too, was sent away to France, leaving her pregnant? That would have been the ultimate disgrace in those times. What if her parents insisted on having the child adopted? How would she feel? How would she cope? I asked myself what kind of life would this baby have? What would her adoptive parents be like? Rich or poor? Would she be cared for and loved? Would she be told the story of her birth or would it be kept a secret from her? What if the real mother does find her daughter again, how would she feel? What could she do about it? In answering those questions I had The Summer House. (Long listed for the Romantic Novelists' Annual award.)

On the other hand, The Fountain was inspired by a competition run by my local newspaper to design a new fountain to go on the market square. It resulted in hundreds of entries, some well drawn, others scribbled on the backs of envelopes. None of them was ever used, except by me as inspiration. I set it between the wars when it was easier for unscrupulous public servants to get away with corruption. If my heroine was married to such a one, how would she react? Would she support him or would she rebel?

The Kirilov Star was the result of my fascination with the Russian Revolution and the fate of the aristocracy, particularly the story of the possible survival of Grand Duchess Anastasia, (since disproved), but supposing my heroine did survive, the only one in her family to do so, and was brought out of Russia as a child to be adopted and brought up in England? How strong would her Russian roots be? Would the pull be strong enough to make her abandon a comfortable life to go in search of them? This was short listed for the historical section of the Romantic Novelists' Romantic Novel of the Year Award)

The idea for The Girl on the Beach came from a story my husband told me of one of his wartime experiences. Crossing a ditch in Germany in 1944 he jumped on a mine and was blown sky high. He woke up in hospital in England with traumatic loss of memory. Luckily for him it came back after a few days. I tried to imagine what it would be like not to remember your own name, where you come from, even whether you are married or not. It must surely affect everything you do and say and think and you would be forever niggling at it, trying to bring it back. If the loss of memory lasted for years and not days, how would someone cope, especially in wartime? And perhaps the returning memory might be even more traumatic. When my heroine's memory returns, she is left with a greater dilemma: is she Julie Walker married to Harry, or is she Eve Seaton, engaged to Alec Kilby? Where is Harry and who is buried in the grave alongside her son?

The Second World War has been a great source for stories and Escape by Moonlight is no exception. I remember it vividly even though I was a child at the time. I remember the blackout and the blitz, the rationing and shortages, the long queues and the black market and almost everyone in a uniform of one kind or another. It was a time of great upheaval, not only of danger and hardship which was considerable, but changes in the way people lived. The two women in my story, one privileged and wealthy, the other the daughter of a railway worker, are poles apart but linked by war.

The Stubble Field is set in the nineteenth century and came about from two books I had been reading: The Workhouse by Norman Longmate and The Railway Navvies by Terry Coleman. I asked myself what it must be have been like to be forced into the workhouse where husbands were separated from wives, parents from children and brothers from sisters. What happened to the children when they went out into the world? Did they ever see their siblings again? The hard lives of the navvies fascinated me: all those miles and miles of railway lines built with nothing but shovels and strong muscles. Together they gave me my story. The book is long out of print, but now renamed A Line Through Chevington, it is once again on sale as an e-book, together with its sequel Promises and Pie Crusts.