Hello from New York!

You would think that being in this incredible city would inspire me to blog. But inspiration comes when you’re not looking for it.

It will come to me while I’m driving or in the shower or when I don’t have a notebook on me so that I’ll have to scribble on receipts scrounged from my wallet.

‘Where do you get your ideas from?’ is the commonest question I get asked.

Inspiration for my books have come from things that I experienced as a child – the racial prejudice, being shy, my lack of confidence, my wanting to be someone else.

Many of us have felt this way so many can relate to the characters in my stories.

Inspiration comes from things that I see,

and feel

Things that make me laugh

and

cry.

I take pictures in my mind or on my camera or draw them in a sketchbook to remind myself what I’ve seen.

I went to Harlem yesterday. It was like walking through a play with voices for music. There was so much life.

A man in a wheel chair crossed the road turned his chair around and gracefully mounted the curb backwards.

Another man came out of a shop muttering to himself, large protruding eyes, head bent, leaning on a walking stick.

A group of girls yelled at each other or maybe they were talking love only loudly.

Two men stood half way in the road shooting the breeze as yellow cabs passed silently around them.

While on the way to Beacon in upstate New York, the train sped past Bannerman island on the Hudson River and this is what we saw. The ruins of an old castle, a sudden juxtaposition to Europe. This photo will be stored away for a story one day.