It’s that time of year again and out come the resolutions. I should/will/must:
go to the gym
cut down on the wine
quit smoking
eat less
be nice to my enemies…

Oh, and if you’re a writer, there’s lots more you must do in 2012:
write a chapter a day
kill your darlings
give up adjectives
rewrite, rewrite, rewrite
twitter, twitter
write four books by next Christmas…

Those pesky modals. Should, could, would, might, need to, ought to, have to, must, not to mention their merry cousins, the shouldn’t-couldn’t-wouldn’t-MUSTN’T brigade. When I listen to most of the writers I know, their talk is littered with such wretched compulsions and obligations. And these are people who are supposed to be aware of the power of language.

Listen up, writers, here’s a thought for the new year:

Willpower gets you nowhere except into a trough of guilt and procrastination.

So

So, try Wontpower, instead.

No, I haven’t lost an apostrophe. Wont is a lovely word which we are wont to use when in historical mode. What we are wont to do, we are accustomed to do, we are in the habit of doing and, best of all, when we do our wont, we do it without stress or anxiety.
The roots of the word lie in Old English gewunian, past participle gewunod, which means to dwell, to live habitually in a place.

And that’s exactly the place where we writers do best, a place where we flourish, where we feel comfortable with our inspiration, our art and our craft, where we never have the willies, a place where the evil inner critic dare not show its sour face, where words flow and characters grow and facts are servants and never masters.

Think about it as the shining year lies before us.

Meanwhile, I really have to go for a walk and I must get the ending of that chapter right and I really should. . .

Happy New Year!

It’s a funny phrase, because it sounds like growing an idea is letting rip with some fell disease. But I like this original meaning of the word. It arrived in English in the fifteenth century from the old French germe which came from Latin germen meaning bud, sprout, offshoot. Think wheat germ. This is the fruity meaning of the word, describing a potential for luxurious and sustaining growth.

This is how novels start: great oaks from little acorns grow.

I’ve written twenty-five novels, all of which have been published (not all under the same name) and DEVIL’S SONATA makes it number twenty-six. Of all of them, this is the book whose conception I can pinpoint to a particular moment, in a particular place: the 13.30 train from London to York.

Trains are good for ideas. So is driving and idling in the shower and slapping down the cards in a game of solitaire. It’s a combination of movement and soothing, steady sound that lulls the busy, rational brain and allows all the interesting stuff to come out to play from the hidden recesses of the mind.

The idea that came to me in that train was of a violinist, a young and prodigious violinist, who acquires her virtuosity by playing a bewitched violin inhabited by the spirit of a former prodigy who sold her soul to the devil in return for the gift of music.

This is a version of an old story, and I know why it was on my mind. I’d been reading an article in Strad magazine about how astonished the English were when Italian virtuosi came to London and shifted – moved the fingers of the left hand up and down the fingerboard to create a vastly increased range of sound. The sceptical English looked down at the violinists’ feet, to see if they had cloven hoofs.

Then I remembered a couple of other associations of Old Nick with violins: Paganini, whose playing was so extraordinary he was rumoured to have sold his soul to the devil and was therefore denied a Catholic burial, and Tartini, who wrote the brilliant Devil’s Trill sonata.

There I was, with a young violinist and a haunted violin. I needed a setting. I’d recently visited Forde Abbey, in Dorset, and I also had an image in my mind of Newstead Abbey, Lord Byron’s stately home. Abbeys made me think of monks, and then, hop, skip and jump, we’re at the Dissolution of the Monasteries.

Fast forward to the present day. What would bring the violinist, the violin and the abbey together? A school. Which became an elite boarding school in a remote part of northern England. And how would that link back to the origins of the abbey? Ah, wicked monks who were as bad as Thomas Cromwell pretended monks were, dabblers in necromancy.

What if they left a grimoire walled up in the cloisters?

What if a neuroscientist, an expert in why people believe in the supernatural, was called in to look at the book of spells?

What if she discovered there was no rational explanation for what was happening at Beauregard Abbey?

So begins Dr Zuleika Rathbone’s battle with forces beyond her reason, understanding or control.

Because EVIL NEVER DIES.

Memories of childhood in India

Arriving in Ceylon

We sailed into the harbour at Colombo, Ceylon (this was a time when it was called Ceylon and not Sri Lanka) in the evening, and at about eight o’clock, the P & O liner let down its anchor with a great rattle of heavy chain. My brother and I were wildly excited and we dashed from watching the anchor back to our cabin, where a frowning Mama was still counting luggage and putting tips into envelopes.

The ship was too big to dock, so it stayed out in the harbour, and we went ashore by motor launch in the dark, the incredible tropical dark that comes in a second; a velvety darkness. Twinkling lights beckoned to us from the land. It was hot and sultry, but I’d got used to that on the voyage as we journeyed from the bitter cold of an English February into steadily warmer weather. My brother, the stargazer, had his eyes fixed on the skies, as he had done every night since the stars changed to those of the southern hemisphere. ‘It’s like being in another world,’ he said.

Ceylon was definitely another world. On land, we still had our sea legs and walked uncertainly. Here was Pa, not seen for months, come to welcome us. He had travelled down from Calcutta to meet the boat. He was just the same, silver haired and moustached, but deeply tanned. We went with all our luggage to a hotel, and the two of us were packed off to bed. It was strange to sleep in an ordinary bed, and I felt I was still on the boat, with the room swaying around me. Above our heads slow punkahs revolved, one of them going clunk, clunk, clunk. A mosquito whined: I knew it would attack me, but not my brother.

Next morning we woke early. The room seemed huge, after our cabin on board. And there was an enormous bathroom, all to ourselves. Amazing to children used to one bathroom and an extra lav. We skipped down the stately staircase and into the dining room for breakfast. More punkahs whirling round, and Mama and Pa were already there, seated at a big round table with a gleaming white tablecloth, deep in talk. Breakfast was served by bearers in white uniforms, moving silently on brown bare feet. Bacon and eggs with toast and marmalade; I was surprised, I’d expected curry.

‘This morning,’ Pa said, ‘we’re going to the elephant factory.’