A Peony Rose by Any Other Name...

All kinds of things can inspire a writer.  A snippet of overheard conversation, the note of a song, a flickering memory of a dream, a person’s name.

The series I’m writing right now, each story has found inspiration in a flower.

 

The first book is set in Vallemont - a make-believe principality in Europe somewhere.

Writing one day the Palace of Vallemont cast a rosy hue when the sun hit it just so. From this came the country’s official colours of pink and rose gold. A wedding is set to take place in the story.  Much excitement has gripped the land.  Peony petals are tossed in the air with abandon and now cover the village streets.

 

Yes, peonies.

Since my muse tossed them into the story in a seemingly random way, I have become obsessed.  Googling images till my vision turns dusty pink. Getting a little heart flutter every time my laptop turns on and the abundant loveliness of my peony wallpaper hits my eyes. Are they not the most soft, pretty, elegant, flower there is?  Lush (with all those softly curving petals) yet vulnerable too. Easily bruised.

 

They are now seriously nudging at gardenias (my wedding flower) for the number one spot in my exclusive list of favourites.

Now onto the next book in the series; set in the rural central coast of Australia. The first lines of the book my heroine stepped out of her shack and blinked sleepily towards the sunrise casting a misty glow over the acres of wild lavender carpeting the hillside.

 

Lavender. 

 

Not my favourite flower.  As someone with a strong sense of smell I struggle with lavender.  But oh, that field outside the heroine’s front door. When the wind creates waving tracks in the weave, it looks like a single living thing.  And my muse is a happy fellow.

 

These things aren’t often planned. Not for me. They happen organically.  Arriving like a speck of glitter thrown by my muse.

Yet that speck can inform so much of the story.

 

From the peony petals stomped into a mud puddle when the royal wedding doesn’t go as planned, to the heroine despairing that the field of lavender outside her front door will be lost if the land development goes ahead.

 

Those small details can give a story colour, life, scent, earthiness, grounding.

 

As for the author?  She gets to google pictures of pretty flowers and call it research.

 

Do you have a favourite flower?  Is there a story behind how it came to be so?



Life-long story telling

I've just spend a wonderful few days with family, celebrating my father's 72nd birthday. At the heart of the celebration were my two "nieces", five and eight years old. (They're not exactly blood relatives, but our families have been celebrating birthdays together since their Mum and I were younger than they are now, so they qualify. Also, I've changed nappies and given baths and supervised homework, so I figure I've earned the "Aunty" designation.)

I was conscious of the fact that the whole weekend was full of storytelling. Our family doesn't get together terribly often, as we're geographically spread around, so there's lots of the "what's been going on" kind of stories that needed to be told. Then, like many dads, there's nothing my father likes than a long, drawn-out joke with a terrible pun as the punchline. There were also bedtime stories to read (I'd forgotten how wonderful and twisty that Doctor Seuss prose is.) And there were plenty of kids' stories too, often starting with a breathless, "Guess what?"

One of the new artworks destined for my refrigerator...

I asked my eight-year-old niece to write me a story because I was interested to see what sort of thing she might come up with. (Okay, so it might also have also been motivated by the need to keep her occupied while we prepared a birthday dinner for 12...)

She wrote me the most wonderful adventure tale. It was about Emily, a (nice) monster who lived in a cave by a river and who was out one day playing with a ball with her brother, Jack. But then the ball accidentally fell in the river! Jack went in after it, even though Emily told him not to and then, oh no, he started to get swept away! But Emily thought quickly and found a rope and threw it to Jack so he was able to climb out. And everyone chorused, "Hooray!" (She didn't know how to spell "chorused" but she gave it a good try.)

I know everyone thinks their own child (or nephew/niece/cousin/etc) is the smartest, most brilliant child in the world. But seriously, my author's little writing heart glowed and thumped as we read her story aloud. A gusty female protagonist! A hero's journey! A satisfying, happy ending! Awesome word use and vocabulary!

I'm going to start training her now to see if I can turn her into an author.

Reading her story got my mother telling another story. About the time when I was a similar age and I wrote a story on the back of a cardboard box at my parents' shop. They were part of a franchise and I wrote a story about how it had been founded -- a fantastical tale about pirates and deserted islands, apparently. And the head of the franchise visited their store and he saw it, and he told them he was going to see how it could be used as part of their advertising campaign. Which never happened. But still -- perhaps it was a foreshadowing of my future double life in PR and romance writing??

My favourite bedtime story over the weekend was Dr Seuss's "Yurtle the Turtle" -- so much fun to read out loud. Do you have a favourite you like to read to the littlies in your life?