Tuesday 12 May 2020

Anatomy of a Scene...

... friend and author, Anne-Marie Ormsby makes a welcome return to my blog this week and you can read the earlier author interview Here


It's hard to pick a favourite scene when looking back over your own book, but there is one scene which I recall the most as it was the first scene I wrote in my head.
It was March 2018 and I had just moved to Margate after 10 years living in London, and was still working in Hackney.  My first day of the commute was in the wake of fresh snowfall but I headed into town regardless, one of the few people on my train at 6.50am.  By 3pm snow had fallen across Kent, ice lining the rails so fast they couldn’t clear it and all trains had been suspended.  With no way of getting back to Margate, I trudged back into Hackney where I worked and met up with my friend and work colleague who had offered me a bed for the night at hers.
But first we would need to drink a fair amount at the local pub, The Old Ship, on Mare Street and wait out the snowstorm outside.  Some time after 11pm, warmed with red wine, we headed out and towards her home via Broadway Market and another pub stop.  Our journey took us through a deserted park called London Fields which provided a short cut from Mare Street across to Hackney Road.
As we walked through the empty park in the snow I felt a buzz in my brain that wasn’t alcohol.  I thought how terrifying it would be to be followed through the park.  There were pathways disappearing into the dark and the snow had muffled all noise.  It was creepy.  And I loved it.
This late night, post pub walk gave me the trigger I had been waiting for to begin a new story.  I had been running ideas around from a story I wrote when I was 19, my notebook a mess of ideas but couldn’t find a hook.
It was a story of a girl, with the ability to speak to the dead, being stalked by her past and haunted by an entity that had come through from the other side many years before, ruining her life.  I knew I wanted to set it in the London I had fallen in love with, but nothing was coming to me.  But that night in London Fields, inspiration found me.  I left London the next day with threads of the story coming together in my head, and a scene where the lead character is stalked through an empty London park late at night by an invisible threat.



“We turned and carried on walking, but this time in silence. And then I heard it again. Feet keeping pace with us, not far behind, and I felt myself get hot with panic. I turned to look at Stevie who looked back at me, silently telling me she could hear it too. Almost angry I spun on my heels to face whoever was following us, but there was only the empty pathway back towards the Pub on the Park and the houses we could never afford. And yet I could still hear the slow purposeful footsteps, I spun wildly looking out onto the grass to see who was approaching but there was no one, a cold mist had settled in the trees giving the street lights  a soft fuzzy glow, gentle beacons creating circular breaks in the darkness that had carpeted the pathway.”




You can get the book on Amazon and you can follow Anne-Marie on her Website and on Facebook Twitter Instagram and Goodreads

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