Let’s Get Lost

[Paul Whybrow]

The phrase ‘Getting lost in a book” is familiar and true. It applies to reading and writing a book.

'It's a delicious thing to write. To be no longer yourself but to move in an entire universe of your own creating.'

Gustave Flaubert

At present, I’m one-quarter of the way into writing my sixth crime novel, wondering how to give a homicidal Russian female mercenary a love interest. All of my villains have sympathetic traits, partly to round out their characters, but also to wrong-foot the reader. It’s a challenge to make this woman appealing, as she’s killed hundreds of times and is currently chopping off the hands of big game trophy hunters. She’s dominating my thoughts.​

As an antidote I’ve been getting lost in the previous two stories, reacquainting myself with the lives of the detectives, so I can continue their story arcs.​

Their world is more real than my own when I’m writing.

My current reading matter is taking me away to Tudor England (C.J. Sansom’s Tombland), 21st-century Nigeria (Oyinkan Braithwaite’s My Sister, The Serial Killer), 20th-century Canada (Michael Crummey’s Sweetland) and into Kerry Hudson’s memoir Lowborn about growing up in Britain’s poorest towns. It’s a privilege to time-travel and shape-shift in this way.

How are you getting lost at the moment?

In your writing and in your reading?

For no other reason, than it has the right title and it’s charming and romantic:



Chet Baker - Wikipedia