fuelling the imagination

The stories my mother tells me provide wonderful material on which to build characters. Of course she only tells me good things about her family. We have always been more refined than most even though her father was an engine driver and his was a draper and had come from one of the poorest regions of Ireland. The pretense of grandeur is just as relevant for the 19th century characters gold rush characters in my novel The Liberator's Birthday as it is for the story I am working on now which is set in 1902. With imagination the concept of a person considering themselves better than their peers can be applied to any age or circumstance and I am sure I will return to the theme for other characters many times.