Issue No.26

Photo: Carcassonne Tourist Office
I climbed up perilously icy steps into the
ruined castle, then right to the top of the
battlements - there were no railings or
barriers - and stood there looking out over
the incredible beauty of the Pyrenees.
Suddenly, I had a very clear image of a
woman pulling a red cloak tight against the
cold.
10 years later I was at home in Sussex,
writing Labyrinth and that scene, set on that
final day of the siege in Montségur in March
1244 and there she was, my lead character,
Alaїs, standing on the wall. As I typed the
description of her wrapping her red cloak
around herself, I suddenly thought, "Oh,, it's
you. I met you 10 years ago, but I didn't
know who you were." And that's how novel
writing works!
This collision of place, history and inspiration
happened again with The Burning Chambers.
I was in the rue du Marché in the Bastide in
Carcassonne and I suddenly imagined what it
might have been like to walk down this same
street in 1562, on a cold February morning.
What if you were going to work in your
father's bookshop, like on every other day,
without realising that the next day, 1st March
1562, a massacre would take place many
hundreds of miles away, in a place you'd
never heard of called Vassy, but it was
something that would turn your life upside
down and destroy France - a generation of
civil war between Huguenots and Catholics.
And out of that one thought, suddenly Minou
Joubert, my main character, presented
herself. And I felt, ok, now I've got to find out
who you are and tell your story. It’s always
that exhilarating moment at the start of a
novel when one key person - usually a
woman - stands in front of me and offers
their hand. Then, off we go to discover the
story together, but always against the
backdrop of real history, of a real and
amazing place.
I always have a blank piece of paper and a
pen to jot down notes wherever I am. You
never know what, as a writer, you might
notice that will be the thing that sparks the
next idea - someone on the bus tucking her
hair behind her ears, a man weeping in the
street, the child nearly running into the road.