Nicola here. Today I’m talking about wild animals and getting writing inspiration in the most unlikely places.
A few weeks ago I went on holiday to Namibia in South West Africa. When I’m travelling I almost always end up wanting to write a book that involves some element of the place I’ve visited whether it be Scotland, the Arctic or the Sea of Cortes (still working on that pirate book!) However with Namibia I really didn’t expect to feel that way. This was going to be a holiday, pure and simple. Except of course that you can’t keep a writer’s imagination from working even when it’s supposed to be at rest!
We started off in the capital, Windhoek, and drove northwards. This part of the 
trip was all about the animals as we were heading to Namibia’s famous National Park, Etosha. I’ve been lucky enough to go on safari before but I had forgotten how exciting it can be to see animals in the wild. I love the experience at home – deer, badgers, foxes, they are all fun to watch. But out in Africa there was a different quality of experience in seeing animals in their natural habitat, animals that quite frankly I wouldn't want to bump into when I was out walking, such as lions, leopard, elephants and rhino!
Digressing slightly into history, if you go back far enough there was a time when lions, tigers and jaguars larger than today’s predators roamed the Northern hemisphere. In Britain and Europe these huge lions died out in the wild 13 000 years ago. Bears were wild in Britain until about 1000 AD so the Anglo Saxons would have been familiar with seeing them, whilst opinions vary as to when the wolf died out but it had gone from England by the 17th century and from Ireland and Scotland a hundred years or so later. (The photo is me meeting a wolf cub a few years ago at a place where you can go for walks in the forest with them. It's trying to lick my face rather than eat me!)
Throughout English history, however, there has been an appetite to see exotic animals. The first lions 
were recorded in the Royal Menagerie at the Tower of London in 1210 during the reign of King John. Everything from tigers to elephants, kangaroos and ostriches were kept there. Travelling menageries toured the country. One of the problems with both static and travelling zoos, however, was that the animals would escape every so often. In 1816 the Exeter to London mail coach was attacked near Salisbury by a lioness that had escaped from a travelling circus and in 1832 the Duke of Wellington in his role as Constable of the Tower of London closed down the Royal Menagerie, sending the animals to London Zoo because they kept escaping and causing mayhem.
As I discovered, though, Namibia is about a great deal more than the animals, fabulous as the wildlife viewing was. (And let's not forget the birds either - they were beautiful!) It has a stunning landscape and a rich history and at almost every turn I was confronted by storytelling. There were the wonderful myths and legends associated with the sacred Leadwood Tree, said to be the tree that gave birth to humankind. There were the tales of the wrecked ships of the Skeleton Coast and the sailors who perished in those dangerous waters.
Like so many African countries Namibia was a part of the European scramble for Africa and as early as 
1793 the Dutch and then the British established a trading post at Walvis Bay, the only deep-water harbour on the wild Atlantic coast. It was Germany, however, who declared South West Africa, as it was called then, a colony in 1884 and German involvement in the country lasted until after the First World War. The history of South West Africa is full of war and violence, struggle and heroism but also exploration, diamond mining and ostrich farming. It's a rich source of ideas!
Given that my current book is a dual time story set in the Tudor period and modern day England it was difficult to imagine how the history of South West Africa might winkle its way into the tale. But the writer’s imagination will not be constrained! I wanted to find a way to include those fabulous sunsets over the desert and the stunning Quiver trees and the wild Atlantic breakers. I wanted my heroine to feel the hot sun on her face and the hot sand beneath her feet and to experience an exotic upbringing far beyond anything her contemporaries might imagine.
When I got back home I emailed my editor. How would it be if instead of a current day thread in the story I wrote about a girl who had grown up in South West Africa with her explorer father and on his death returned to a Victorian England that was a vastly different society from anything she had experienced before? To my amazement my editor agreed and so my current day thread became a Victorian one that gave me the scope to bring in some fascinating detail of setting and background researched in Namibia.
Cats, dogs, lions, elephants... Are you an animal lover? Is there a bird or animal, living or extinct, that is your favourite or that you would like to see? One commenter between now and midnight Thursday BST will win a copy of The Regency House Party, which features a particularly adorable dog!
