If you read Inside Evil, you’ll often discover that there are some instances of what I like to call ‘nature-love’. Whilst the book may be, at it’s foundation, the story of a woman trying to save her life whilst another copes with the death of her daughter, from time to time my love of nature rears it’s head. Take Elrick, the tiny spider that helps Roberta enter the mysterious world of Gathin. Or the moths that help to offer hope in the darkest of situations . Or even the changing season as the first snow descends on Ridgewood. When I write, I can’t help but to put these touches in.

Many of these elements, whether predetermined or not, are led by my love of the natural world. Away from writing, I’m a landscape gardener and horticultural copywriter. My days are spent either amongst plants and creatures or at my desk writing about plants and creatures. One of the things I’ve discovered is that inspiration often comes to me when I’m away from my desk and ensconced in my latest gardening project, whether I’m digging down on my allotment or visiting a clients garden for some maintenance work. These quiet hours, surrounded by plants and wildlife allow my mind to drift. Sentences form in my mind, and paragraphs of text develop that are put into my WIPs. They are not generally major story changes or milestones, but can often subtlety change the direction of a chapter without me really knowing.

Whilst we’ve all probably encountered writers block, where we sit down to write and nothing flows or sounds right, I find inspiration is everywhere. It’s the actual lumping oneself down in front of a monitor to type that can be the problem. It’s certainly meant that Inside Evil was published years after it was first conceived.

So my question is this…how do you find inspiration? Do you actively look for it, or does it come naturally? Does inspiration come to you as you write, or as a moment of clarity in regular life which suddenly starts your mind whirring, and your fingers desperate to get home and start tapping away?