by Sarah Rayne | Dec 17, 2016 | Sarah Rayne
There are many theories as to when story-telling actually began. In the old Arabian legends, Scheherazade was allowed to live for the following day if she told an entertaining story that night. Which is singing for your supper with a vengeance. Our prehistoric...
by Sarah Rayne | Sep 19, 2016 | Sarah Rayne
While writing Death Notes, (Book One of the Phineas Fox series), I was initially delighted to discover the existence of the Opera and Ballet Theatre of Odessa – a building that had the splendid address of No 1 Tchaikovsky Street. The theatre had been burned...
by Sarah Rayne | May 20, 2016 | Sarah Rayne
There was a time when a degree of glamour attached itself to a journey – when journeys themselves could provide a writer with a splendidly atmospheric setting. You could place your characters on a train or a ship and cast them into all manner of perilous, murderous,...
by Sarah Rayne | Apr 22, 2016 | ancient legends, haunted houses, old diaries, Sarah Rayne, settings for fiction
A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, I wrote a quartet of fantasy books set in ancient Ireland and starring a charismatic, slightly-dangerous, and not entirely human creature… Cormac mac Airt was inspired by a medieval King of Ireland of the same name, and I...
by Sarah Rayne | Feb 27, 2016 | Sarah Rayne, settings for fiction
The legal profession has always been a novelists’ treasure house, and lawyers themselves are a gift to writers of fiction. If your plot has wound itself into a hopeless tangle, you can often solve matters by allowing the family solicitor to discover old documents or...
by Sarah Rayne | Feb 14, 2016 | charect, haunted houses, Sarah Rayne, settings for fiction
There’s a marvellous theme running through Benjamin Britten’s opera, Owen Wingrave, which is based on the Henry James’ story. It’s, ‘Listen to the house.’ It’s something I’ve done for years. By ‘listen’ I don’t mean yomping round the Tower of London and thinking...
by Sarah Rayne | Jan 7, 2016 | ancient legends, ghosts, haunted houses, Sarah Rayne, Uncategorized
Quite near to where I live is a beautiful and mostly unspoilt village which is chockful of history. It’s home to the 1,000-year-old Horn Dance, whose performers still caper through the village with enthusiastic glee once a year; it’s mentioned in the Domesday Book,...
by Sarah Rayne | Dec 4, 2015 | ghost stories, ghosts, haunted houses, Uncategorized
It was not a day on which I was expecting to meet a ghost. I know I write books with slightly eerie settings and incidents – also outright, unashamed ghost stories – but I don’t actually expect to actually find myself in one of those settings. It was, in fact, a...
by Sarah Rayne | Nov 20, 2015 | Sarah Rayne
When portrayed on the grand scale, villains in fiction can be surprisingly fascinating. Would vampires as a race have gained such worldwide appeal without a sinister undead gentleman in evening dress dominating the screen or the page? Equally, would psychological...
by Sarah Rayne | Nov 6, 2015 | Uncategorized
There’s frequently a point in a book where it’s nice to have characters grouped round a dinner table discussing the latest plot developments. This can be helpful for giving the reader an update on where the story’s got to – not to mention doing the same for the...
