The Goddess in the Darkness

Where do you get your ideas? We are often asked that, as are most writers.

And sometimes it's a difficult question to answer.

How we get the ideas is easier: we look for them; we put ourselves in places and situations where ideas might suddenly spontaneously appear.

Michael Slade(pen name of Jay Clarke), prolific author of police novels, gave a lecture entitled Where do you get your ideas? for the Surrey International Writers Conference and listed 40 topics covered in his many novels, including voodoo, headhunting, the London sewer system, Hitler's bunker, the history of hanging and plastic surgery.

Michael Slade

Sometimes you experience a place or an event, and later, when you're sitting down to write a scene or plan the plotline of a novel, that experience or scene manifests itself and demands to be heard.

We had one such experience when we visited the Karnak Temple in Egypt.

Our energetic guide took us off to the left side of the temple, through an empty field, until we came to some old buildings. Inside them, he told us that there was a statue of the goddess Sekhmet inside, alone in the darkness, and that we could commune with her, alone or in small groups.

Loraine did so, spending several minutes alone with the goddess in the darkness, and when we came to write Obelisk Seven, we included this scene in the novel.

Sekhmet