Yesterday The Very Pink Notebook hosted the Gilding The Lily blog tour by author Justine John. Today I am very excited to share a guest post from the author about her inspiration behind the book.
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My Inspiration Behind The Book
By Justine John
Much of the story is based on some things that happened to me during my
father’s death which was very sudden. That
process of his illness and death, seemed to put me in a set of circumstances
that challenged me greatly. Organising a
funeral in a foreign country is challenging, but because I wasn’t expecting it,
I felt as though I was in a dream and the things that happened around me were
almost fictional. It was a coping
mechanism I suppose. I came out of that process with a story.
I tried to begin the book too soon – I knew I had to get something out,
and I wrote Chapter 1, but couldn’t go any further. I just didn’t know what to put next.
It wasn’t until I came through the grieving completely, about three
years later, that I began to write again.
In 2013, a health issue took over, and a major operation loomed. I was advised that I would not be able to
work for a minimum of eight weeks – probably more like sixteen. I had begun to resent some of my work
projects (life was too short), and I was feeling almost shackled; only a sense
of duty, not ‘earning’ a living stopped me from giving up. But now I was being forced to stop for a
while – so stop I did. In my tracks. Here it was – my chance to get that story in
my head on paper. So the day I was home
from hospital, I began Chapter 2. And I
never looked back.
Amelia, the main character, and I have much in common. We both come from a divorced parentage, and
experienced difficulty and abnormality in our upbringing. And we both have a massive internal need to
please our fathers. As all good writers
do, I took some personal experience and whipped it up with a lot of fiction and
made it into what is hopefully a good story.
Now I’ve started I very much want to continue. I will begin my second Novel in early 2017
and hopefully continue with the same characters but in a different way, using a
similar formula. Hopefully this time it
won’t take me so long!
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