When I started writing Finding Juniper I was fascinated with amnesia, especially the type that has no physical cause, what Freud would probably have described as hysterical repression.

The philosopher Hegel was quite poetic I think in his description of this form of amnesia as a form of disease in which the soul is aware of a content it has long since forgotten, and which when awake is no longer able to recall consciously.

I was fascinated with the idea of the unconscious “knowing” things that the conscious mind is not aware of, and how dreams can be paths into the unconscious.

Sense memories are also fascinating – that is, memories that are not dependent on language. In Finding Juniper I make use of visual images as triggers. There are snapshots of events, hints, but Juniper cannot yet see the whole story.

As I write this I can’t help thinking, what about smells, even tastes?

I wonder have you ever been transported back to an earlier experience, even to childhood, by a particular odor.

In my teens, my boyfriend was an artist who liked to work with oils. He smelled like oil paint.
I haven’t thought of him or seen him in years but to this day when I smell oil paint I am transported back to that time and place, to his paint-spattered hands and to his tweedy jacket with that oil paint smell and that heady feeling of young love.

Maybe this could be a starting point for a new story!