Where do writers' ideas come from?

If there’s one question I’m reliably asked as the author of The Women of Blackmouth Street, it’s where do you get your ideas?

Often, it’s not about ideas but about one singular idea or, more accurately, an obsession that takes hold like a fever you can’t shake. Because to write 90,000 words, you have to be obsessed, possessed and gripped by a fixation that won’t let you go. And sometimes the fever strikes when you least expect it. Twice, in my case.

The first time, I was in the UK at a London hospital, a formidable gothic building with atmosphere to spare, waiting for my husband to finish with a meeting. Trying to shake off my jet lag, I wandered from the large reception area and down a narrow hallway, intrigued by a collection of sepia-toned photographs behind glass. The images of the late-Victorian era hospital were fascinating. Hansom cabs lining the front entrance. A long march of beds in a hospital ward. A gargoyle on the keystone of a tower. And in the bottom corner of the display, a photograph of a woman in profile, walking up a stair case, her stare resolute, shoulders squared, as though on a mission. Her image stayed with me, wavering after a few weeks, before dissolving into the ether of every day life.

A year later, I was in Vienna, loitering at one of the exhibits at the Sigmund Freud Museum where the famous psychanalyst both lived and treated his patients. More like a home than a museum, 19 Bergasse with its warren of rooms, struck a melancholy mood. Freud’s doctor’s bag bearing his initials. The parquet floored parlor. The waiting room with its upholstered sofa. Once again, texts and manuscripts under glass and a collection of photographs, one of which was startingly familiar. A group shot with a formal garden as backdrop, but that same London woman in profile, this time looking away from the camera, over her shoulder, the outlines of her face indelible.

Who was she? And what was she doing over a century ago at a London Hospital and then again, in Vienna, at the heart of a movement that changed the way we understand the human psyche?

Those questions wouldn’t leave me alone. And neither would the woman, stalking me from London to Vienna and then back home. It’s a volatile combination, imagination fired by curiosity, wherein the need to know becomes an obsession. Writing is like watching a movie in your mind’s eye, images shifting in and out of frames, characters coming into focus, doors opening and closing leaving you wondering what happens next. Like any reader caught by a story, you can’t stop because you need to know…

Two unrelated photographs. Lots of atmosphere. An interest in strong female protagonists doing all the wrong things for the right reasons – that’s how the idea of Georgia Buchanan, the gifted psychologist, mind doctor and heiress ofThe Women of Blackmouth Street, took shape. If your curiosity is piqued, if you need to know more, you can get the book here.