Because truly, it is traveling and the real untampered emotions you feel when you explore a new place or meet a new person that constantly inspire me to write.

You may already know (because I just can’t stop talking about it) that this last autumn, my family and I had the chance to visit Scotland and its Highlands. It was a time that was the very embodiment of enchantment. There was just something about the way the lights sparkled over Edinburgh from Arthur’s Seat and the way the wild Highland air seemed to make every single particle of my body sing with life that instantly enthralled me.

It wasn’t the only destination that had ever beguiled me so. The last place where I had felt so at home instantly was Arcos de la Frontera, deep in the heart of Andalusia, Spain, the shining white washed town that was the birthplace of Dawn of the Guardian.

It made me realise just how much travel played a part and has always played a part in guiding me along my journey of writing, how much the everyday sights, sounds and smells had impacted me and how they had translated across in the mannerisms and personalities of the characters I wrote.

At the very beginning, I found that almost everyone would say: “Write what you know,” but when I started writing Dawn of the Guardian, all I had was the name of a brown eyed, black dog and my infinite imagination. I never envisioned that what I would write would have a truth to it, that a fantasy fiction adventure novel could hold fragments of myself within every single letter or punctuation mark. But it did.

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