Goodreads asked Eden James:

How do you get inspired to write?

Eden James Emotions. Being a rather insular, antisocial type by nature, I am very introspective. I find nothing more pleasurable than wandering along a deserted Highland beach, or tracking across an isolated glen. Along the way the scenery can imbue a variety of emotions, reflected in the weather, the landscape, a passing bird. How would I describe it? How could I permeate that feeling to others. Conversely, with a love of the automobile and the excitement of motorsport, that heady mixture of people, places and petrol is something else that inspires a drive to write. To capture a dynamic, intense scene with a whisper of words in the same manner a painter might with a flicker of brushstrokes, or a photographer with a well-timed shot.

The visual world created by imagination is also a powerful inspiration. I may have an idea, an atmosphere, or a scene that I particularly want to create in the mind of my readers, so they see things as I have imagined them. This has invariably led to rather lengthy and superfluous descriptions in manuscript drafts, yet often this can be distilled to salient points as part of a punchy narrative, but is good fuel to explore the senses.

Architecture. Both the natural and the man-made provides a rich seam of inspiration. An architect was a profession I previously considered and I like the technical terms to describe certain structural and decorative elements; corbels, buttresses and quoins.

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