Dream plot

"Where do you get your story ideas?" readers sometimes ask.
Well in the case of Lovers' Wheel, it literally came to me in a dream.

One night some decades ago, probably before I was even a writer, I had a dream so real and so emotionally powerful that I’ve never forgotten it.

I dreamed that I was standing at the gates of a big old house somewhere in the English countryside. The grounds were so overgrown that the gates were almost choked shut with brambles and weeds, but when I scrambled through and made my way up the drive I found that the house was still occupied despite being decayed. In fact it was a retirement home, with old people sitting around in wheelchairs, dozing and playing chess. Then I realized that these old men were the disguised King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table, who had retreated here to await in secret the last call to battle when England would need their heroes again.

That was it. That’s all I dreamed.

Years later, this became the seed for the Lovers’ Wheel quartet I’m currently writing for Ellora’s Cave.

Now I know roughly where the idea grew from. All my childhood I’d been reading stories from authors like Susan Cooper, Alan Garner, and Diana Wynne Jones, in which the nice cosy English countryside was a place where lurked gods and elves and Ancient Powers pretending to be human, just biding their time and perhaps waiting to be woken by plucky middle class school children on holiday. I LOVED those books! I wanted to write a wondrous story about a girl who discovers a hidden world of magical adventure, a girl who is marked for a special destiny, a girl whose choices decide the fate of the world.

Only I wanted to write the adult version, with really dirty sex and way more moral greyness.

Lovers’ Wheel is about Liz, who goes to stay with her Great-aunt Moira at spooky old Enniswitrin House in Somerset, and finds that she’s been picked for the noble task of fucking each of the Twelve Months of the Year in turn, to keep the seasons turning. But being Chosen isn’t nearly as nice or as vanilla as she’s been lead to believe, especially as the Brothers start to lead her into the darker half of the year.

As for Arthur – yeah, he’s there too! Read Summer Seduction and Falling Deep to find out about him. And I promise that When Winter Comes and Joys of Spring will complete the cycle of the year in due course!

Summer Seduction (Lovers’ Wheel Book 1) at Amazon US:

Summer Seduction (Lovers’ Wheel Book 1) at Amazon UK:

Falling Deep (Lovers' Wheel  Book 2) at Amazon US:

Falling Deep (Lovers' Wheel  Book 2) at Amazon UK: