Theresa Talbot

“As an author one of the most common things I get asked is, ‘where d’you get your ideas from?’ It’s the sixty-thousand dollar question and one that strikes fear and dread into the heart of most writers. As though we have an Ideas Factory, the location of which a closely guarded secret, lest someone else discovers it and we’re left adrift in the wilderness, without even a thinly disguised trope to keep us warm. Or perhaps there’s some dodgy geezer down the pub, sitting alone at the back, nursing his pint, a bag of ideas under the counter, waiting patiently for desperate writers to approach willing to give their last penny for a decent plot-line.

The truth is much more mundane; ideas, for me anyway, just seem to evolve. A seed of an idea can be planted from the most ordinary source. As a journalist all of my books are inspired by real life. My main character Oonagh O’Neil is a journalist (I took the ‘write about what you know' rather literally with this one) and the stories she investigates have all come from news items I’ve either covered myself, or have been interested in.”
― Theresa Talbot