Ask the Author: Gina Cheyne
Answered Questions (7)
Gina Cheyne
Write, read and watch how people interact with sympathy. Writers look to see why people behave as they do.
Gina Cheyne
Like all authors I have a period where inspiration won’t come, but I find these are divided into two distinct types. One where I feel I’m useless as a writer, no one wants to read what I write and I may as well give up. And the second where I simply can’t start a new story because all my ideas seem silly and worthless.
With the first type of block I have learnt to leave the story I found so useless and start another one. This has often worked so well I can return to the other story later - or not, depending. I also have to give myself a pep talk and point out that if no one reads the story it won’t matter since then no one will know how useless a writer I am.
With the second I have to keep moving around looking for different inspiration but not forcing it. Sometimes it is worth just lying around and seeing what happens.
With the first type of block I have learnt to leave the story I found so useless and start another one. This has often worked so well I can return to the other story later - or not, depending. I also have to give myself a pep talk and point out that if no one reads the story it won’t matter since then no one will know how useless a writer I am.
With the second I have to keep moving around looking for different inspiration but not forcing it. Sometimes it is worth just lying around and seeing what happens.
Gina Cheyne
Not having just one boss but many… the readers
Gina Cheyne
The mystery of why when we bought a house in a village with both a shop and a pub both closed. One will reopen but the other is a real mystery- the owners are still living there, haven’t changed anything since they closed it and don’t sell anything either… what is happening there?
Gina Cheyne
I am currently working on a whodunnit set around a game of bridge. Bridge players can get hugely angry: what would happen if your partner played extremely badly and you had a loaded gun at the table? Would you shoot your partner? What if your partner was your husband and you were already angry with him, would this drive you a little bit further? There is a real case where this did happen in the 1920s and the wife, who shot her husband during a bridge game, was acquitted. I have used this story as a starting point for my latest novel.
Gina Cheyne
I get inspired to write by the life around me. One day I will be playing tennis and I think, what if a tennis ball hit someone directly on the head, would that kill him? It would be manslaughter, unless someone directly propelled the ball towards the victim. Would they have to be a very expert tennis player to do that? Would it be possible to put lead shot in the ball and so make it more lethal? When I answer all those questions, I have my next mystery whodunnit.
Gina Cheyne
With all my books I find inspiration comes from life around me. In the case of the most recent book, The Mystery of the Lost Husbands by Gina Cheyne, I was chatting to friends in the pub and heard that the fourth husband of one of the villagers has just died of a heart attack. The widow was only in her forties. I was very shocked and asked about the previous husbands. No one knew anything about them, and so I thought ah… what a mystery… so many lost husbands. And the book was born!
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