Hi everyone! Apologies for the delay--I was away at a conference and the Internet there wasn't very reliable. I'm home now, though, and can end the suspense for you... The lie is #1. Although it's true that I do make playlists for my novels and characters (and sometimes share songs from these on my Facebook page on Mondays), I only play the songs when I'm not writing, as a way to get the characters moving. I write in silence. Any kind of noise in the background (other than nature) distracts me, and if I'm not alone in the house I put on headphones playing white noise to block out the other sounds so I can concentrate. So, definitely NO music :) I DO get ideas in the bathtub. Whenever I come to a difficult place in my writing, the first thing I do is to run a hot bath. An hour or so of soaking and my characters inevitably stir and start to talk, and I emerge with scribbled water-spotted pages filled with random bits of dialogue and thoughts for scenes, enough to get my story moving. Why I’m inspired in the bathtub I really don’t know, though I privately suspect that the effects of lying neck-deep in warm water with the white noise of the bathroom fan obscuring outside sound comes fairly close to the experience of lying in an isolation tank – sometimes called a ‘sensory deprivation tank’ – in which most people’s brainwaves slow to a speed known as ‘theta’, the daydreaming state that falls somewhere between relaxed ‘alpha’ and sound-asleep ‘delta’. My creative subconscious, in other words, gets time to play. And I DO write some scenes entirely by hand. Usually because they come to me at inconvenient times, in inconvenient places, when I'm away from my computer and have to scramble to find a pen and something to write on before I lose the scene entirely...or sometimes because I'm in the bathtub (see above) and using a computer would be ill-advised...but either way, I just re-type those scenes into the manuscript and file the original paper copy away in the three-ring binder I use to hold all the bits and pieces for that particular book. So there you are. I think I'm off to take a bath... :)

That used to be me, as well, although I surprised myself a couple of years ago when I went on a cruise and wasn't sick AT ALL. Completely unexpected, because I'm like you--normally it doesn't take much. I can't decide whether to cruise again, to see if I can pull it off a second time, or whether I should simply consider that voyage was charmed.

:-) I haven't come across Bourdaloues yet, but I confess I may still be distracted by the active man-servant...

Rabbit holes are the best.

Sue, my parents actually did take off for a time in a pop-up tent trailer. I had no idea where they were, they would just telephone in every now and then from various campsites. They loved it. Looking around my Very Cluttered house right now, that has a definite appeal :-)

Mary Jo, I kept thinking of your characters while I was reading of her travels...

Claire, I can completely relate. I was reading Nancy Drew and A.A. Milne and Jan Westcott and Charles Dickens, all at the same time. And Spider Man comics, of course :-)

Janice, The Cockermouth Mail is another of my favourites, but I didn't add it to my shelves until much later, after I'd had my kids. It's an annual Christmas re-read for me, now (again, probably owing to the Very Cool Boots). And aren't libraries wonderful? What would we do without them, honestly?

Kareni, you would probably find that the magic isn't gone. It will be a different experience, reading it, but then every time you read any book it's a different experience. I love sinking into my old favourites, and can still find magic in them.

Misti, I'm like you--my favourite Mary Stewart changes with the mood I'm in. But Max, as favourite heroes go, stays up there with the best of them :-)

Mary, My Lord Monleigh is a favourite of mine, too. And even though Jan Cox Speas's books are out of print, her family has made My Love, My Enemy (the one set during the War of 1812) available as an ebook, from amazon: https://www.amazon.com/My-Love-Enemy-ebook/dp/B004NSVQMG/wordwench-20 I'm embarrassed to say I've never read any of Molly Costain Haycraft's books (which is unforgivable, really, since her father and I were born in the same city). I should fix that straight away. Do you have a favourite you would recommend I start with?

Sue, I think I might have found the gothic paperback for you--was this it? Dark Legacy? https://www.amazon.com/Dark-Legacy-Formerly-Happy-Now/dp/B000KEM53G It sounds like a very good book. Thanks for sharing!

Kate, I'm happy to welcome you to the club of Blue Castle lovers--I've learned there are a few of us out here, hiding in the shadows... https://dearauthor.com/book-reviews/overall-b-reviews/b-plus-reviews/review-the-blue-castle-by-l-m-montgomery/

Oh, I love the Ivy Tree, too. And I wish magazines would bring back the condensed novel, don't you? It was such a great way to discover new authors. They don't seem to do it anymore. One of my novels (The Shadowy Horses) was condensed by Readers' Digest way back in the day, which was a fascinating experience (and very humbling, since you could see how the story carried on fine when they took out so much of it :-) but then even Readers' Digest stopped doing it. Such a shame.

Sue, maybe the two-year-old you was just declaring a prescient love of Scotland? :-)

It reminded me of that, too, Anne. And even with the boys in the cave, there was a diver lost. So few of these events end with the happiness that this one did. That's why I liked the story, when I found it. (Although now, being me, I'm curious to know more about Lieutenant Dooley...)