In 2010 I wrote a historical romance novel about a handsome Victorian English Vampire Lord.  I really enjoyed writing about his exploits and I have to confess I rather fell in love with him.  I never expected him to leap off the page and come to life in a ghostly form in front of me.  Stranger than fiction?  Most definitely.  But it was to happen again when I wrote my BDSM Romances, His and Daddy’s Rules making me realise I was channelling a Spirit who inspired my work and liked to play the male lead in every book I wrote.

Arabella Kingsley

Arabella Kingsley

I recently read an article about a survey conducted on authors on how they worked.  It found that the majority had concluded they were having some sort of paranormal experience when writing and that their novel had been written by someone else through them.  When I wrote about my Vampire in Knight of Swords, I’d noticed something weird was happening as I got further and further in to the novel.  I always see my story as a movie playing in my head.  Occasionally it is disjointed and I have to piece it together but often it runs eloquently from scene to scene.  The first picture will flourish in to being, filling the screen in my mind and I translate it on to the page.  As I do, the details expand.  I will listen to a song I feel fits the scene and it conspires with my imagination to grow the image.  The flow of words becomes fast and frantic as I reach to get every nuance out on to the page.  Only this day there was something new, something extra occurring in the process.

I became aware for the first time that the scene hadn’t just emerged out of thin air in my mind, that it wasn’t a random collection of thoughts and images I tried to define and make sense of, it had been planted there by someone else.  You can then imagine my surprise when my character appeared standing in front of me as I sat writing and gave me a quick kiss.

I was not a stranger to paranormal experiences after seeing twinkling spirit lights of all different colours throughout my home, outside and around everyone but this was the next level.  My Vampire English Lord was actually a Spirit and I was not imagining him.  A Tarot Reading and several Mediation sessions in a Spiritual Medium’s Circle confirmed the man who appeared as my Spirit Guide and a husband from many past lives.  He had come to assist me with my creative writing and to help me resolve various problems in my life. 

He appeared again taking the lead in all of the scenes I wrote for my previously self published novel His, helping me to develop the story before it reached the page.  As a result, His became a bestseller on both Amazon in the US and UK removing Fifty Shades of Grey from the number one position in Romantic Erotica for just under a week.  Now I am excited it is going to be re-published with Totally Bound Publishing.

But it was whilst working on another successful self published BDSM Romance now about to be republished with Totally Bound, Daddy’s Rules that I was to more keenly feel my Spirit Guide Nathan’s presence.  When I wrote Daddy’s Rules my marriage was failing and I was trapped within it.  Feeling low, I decided to work while having breakfast in a local restaurant on my own.  As I sat eating, I suddenly became aware of an image in my mind of a woman eating alone in the restaurant like myself being observed by a handsome man in the corner of the room, my Guide, Nathan.  He stood and sat down next to her and after a short chat invited her to spend the day with him.  The seed planted in my head, I reached for pen and paper and scribbled down the first scene between Gabrielle and Valentin.  After that the story flowed steadily and became a mirror of my own life encouraging me to exorcise some painful memories as I gained the strength to make the much needed changes to enable me to move on. 

Where do your creative ideas come from?  Who is standing at your side feeding your imagination?