Where Does Your Inspiration Come From?

I’m often asked where I get the ideas for my novels.

It isn’t an easy question to answer because for most authors, me included, ideas come from the oddest places. Once, it was seeing an old, historic wall being repaired. The workers were sanding the brick and dust was swirling around them. I was taken aback that they weren’t wearing masks to protect themselves and did some research. The stone these men were working on wasn’t dangerous but dust from some stone can cause silicosis, a very serious lung condition. Occasionally one exposure can lead to death within a few months. It was a great idea for a story, and I wrote The Couple in the Photograph as a result. Another time, I was walking along the canal past a seat I’d passed many times before. On this occasion there was a man sitting on it, legs stretched out in perfect relaxation as he gazed across the water. I kept walking, but he stuck in my mind and gave me the idea for The Perfect Life.

It was my neighbour who gave me the idea for The Lodger. She knocked on my front door one weekend and said she’d made a cake, she and her partner wouldn’t eat it all, would we like the rest. Of course, I said yes, and the cake was delicious. It was a simple random act of kindness – she knows how much I love home-made cake – but it started me thinking about how often we are kind to others – friends and strangers – without expecting anything in return. The simple things – helping someone lift their child’s buggy down a few steps, mowing a neighbour’s lawn, offering to pay for a meal because you know a friend is low on funds, telling a friend she can sleep on your couch for a few days.

When Leigh Simon, in The Lodger, finds out that Gina, the friendly barista in her local café, needed to find new lodgings, she doesn’t stop to think and offers her the spare room in her house. She doesn’t consider the consequences until too late. Nor does she consider that people might think she has a nefarious reason for offering the young woman the room.  When Gina disappears, Leigh is horrified when the police are suspicious of her motives for having offered the room. 

‘Maybe it’s why she left. You were coming on to her, wanting payback for your’ – the police officer crooked her fingers in the air – ‘kindness.’

‘If there’s one thing I hate more than people doing this’ – Leigh waved her index fingers – ‘it’s people who think everyone has an ulterior motive for being kind.’

Luckily, for most of us, random acts of kindness have only positive repercussions – they make us feel good about ourselves, connect us to people and the world appears a little bit brighter. 

But for poor Leigh in The Lodger – that simple act of kindness had huge and far-reaching consequences. 

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Bio:

Valerie Keogh qualified as a nurse, then went to university as a mature student and gained a Ba in English and an MA in American Literature. She initially self-published until signing her first publishing contract in 2018 and is currently published with Boldwood Books. She took the risk to give up nursing to write full-time, a decision she has never regretted. She writes crime and psychological thrillers. The Lodger, published August 1st, is her 22nd novel.

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THE LODGER

She’s in your home…

Leigh Simons can’t say for sure what made her do it. A moment of madness, perhaps, but when the young, loud and gorgeous waitress at her favorite coffee shop reveals she is homeless, Leigh offers her the empty room in her house.

In your head…

Gina is the perfect lodger; Leigh, lonely and frustrated with her life, becomes infatuated with the woman – her boldness, her zeal. If only Leigh could be more like Gina…

And missing without trace.

So when Leigh returns from a work trip she’s shocked to find Gina missing. Where could the young woman have gone…and why?

Leigh fears that something terrible has happened – why else would Gina leave her?

But as she sets out to find her missing lodger, what Leigh discovers changes everything she knows about Gina….and her own life, too.

Don’t miss the brand new thriller by Valerie Keogh! Perfect for fans of Sue Watson, Shalini Boland and K.L. Slater.

BUY HERE