Thoughts and words

Using music to evoke the past in "The Poor Singer of an Empty Day."

Music is very often associated with people and/or places from the past, whether we like it or not. The soundtrack of our lives - those songs or other pieces of music that will forever be associated with certain events and people that influenced us. Writers can use this phenomenon, too.... Read more →

Inspiration from the newspapers: remembrance and learning from the past.

I found the photo below, and the article to which the photo was attached, in the Sonntags Zeitung - 5 November 2017. The Sonntag's Zeitung is a weekly evangelical publication, and it appears in our postbox every Friday. Several of its articles have grabbed for my attention because the stories... Read more →

Inspiration from beautiful places: Baden Baden

Readers of my blog will know by now that history provides me with inspiration. There are some towns in Europe in which the touch of history is everywhere. Baden-Baden, a spa town in southwestern Germany’s Black Forest, is one of these places. Its thermal baths helped it become a fashionable... Read more →

Inspiration from the past - beauty and horror on Monte Pasubio

Three old friends and assorted family members set off to climb Monte Pasubio just over a week ago. There were 10 of us. The youngest was just 11 years old. The oldest was 67. We spent the night at 1900 metres in the WW1 military refuge shown in pic 4... Read more →

Inspiration from old or abandoned buildings: History lives!

Just look at this ticket hall! It once formed part of a grand station - a turn-of-the-century Franco-Spanish project designed to open up their borders and encourage international trade and travel. The station was built just to the Spanish side of the border and finished in 1928. From the start,... Read more →

July 2017 - Return to the Schoenbuch Forest 2

I used plenty of poetic licence when writing "The Schoenbuch Forest." Nonetheless, when writing about the protagonist's first meeting with Ulrich Schneider, I had the places above in mind. Picture 1 shows the interior of the church in Herrenberg. Picture 2 shows the Apostles Steps, which lead down to the... Read more →

What local papers said about the novel "The Schoenbuch Forest."

For those German speakers out there, here are two articles from the local Herrenberg newspaper about the novel "The Schoenbuch Forest". The first, published in 2007, was written after an interview with the author. The second is an article about Viktor Wagner, his grave in the forest and what it... Read more →

Inspiration for "Feeling the Distance" - fathers and sons

Some years ago, I was entranced to see a TV programme dedicated to children whose fathers were killed or crippled during WW1 and how the absence of a father affected their lives. The interviews with the "children" must have been done in the 80s or 90s when the sons and... Read more →

Inspiration from the news: Carla's Birthday

The newspapers are full of interesting, thought-provoking articles. Many of these articles are no more than a few lines in length and are most often to be found, in my experience, in the local press. Some of these articles have inspired novels, for example, the case of Pietro Maso in... Read more →

Outrageous and interesting people: Cecil Roberts

Cecil Roberts (1892-1976) was an English novelist, poet and dramatist. He was a prolific writer and although his novels were very popular in his lifetime, he is now almost forgotten. His books include A Terrace in the Sun and the Pilgrim Cottage trilogy. During my teens, I read and enjoyed... Read more →