Rick Goldsmith

Now I’ve had some serious doubts about doing this post. Don’t ask me why but sharing video of the marshes by the Thames Estuary didn’t seem too bad in comparison but here goes. I’ve told myself I can always take this post down if I wake up in the middle of the night in a sweat over it.

The chapters from my book A More Perfect World set in the Italian piazza were actually inspired by a few different places. To boil it down there were two locations that really stayed with me. As well as some of the physical details of the shop fronts and the architecture it was an atmosphere that appealed when visiting Tomar in Portugal. I had a strong sense of ‘What would it be like to live and work here?’

What I experienced was a typically touristy sense of the calm of the place. Sure it was superficial but there was something in that for me when I imaganitively returned to it for the novel, those contradictions and desire to hold onto the experience lodged deep in my guts. The unreality of it had a seductive power. The other locale was Castiglione del Lago, Umbria, in Italy. My family and I were wandering about hot and tired through hauntingly beautiful streets when we came upon one that ended in a huge arch, beyond which was the modern town far below. I experienced an acute nostalgia, but for somewhere I’d never been to before.

So was this a good idea or not? Should the reader conjure these places for themselves or does the writer tempt fate and send a curious reader off to look at Google Maps hunting down the street view?