Adventures in Writing YA: London: Witchcraft Inspiration

Well, I'm back in Manchester after a lovely, but tiring, three days in our lovely capital. I have to say most of the time was spent in museums and parks with the family, but I did manage to come home visually inspired and ready to crack on with writing the second half of Witchcraft, which will be set in London.

I'm not giving anything away...if you want a teaser from the second half of the book you'll have to get your friends to look me up and get 'liking' my facebook page & when I get my 'likes' up to 200 I'll blog a teaser ;-)

But I will say that Cole, the southern clan leader, who you hear mentioned briefly in Witchblood is going to be causing some trouble for Jessie and her clan. Just like Sebastian, Cole is more than a couple of hundred years old, powerful and won't stop at breaking The Council's laws to get what he wants...and he wants Jessie!

In Witchcraft you'll learn that Cole has two very different bases. There is his official headquarters, which consists of an exclusive, members only club called Mayfair Moon and the million pound apartment complex above it. The area of Mayfair is beautiful, rich and exclusive, and whilst I didn't do much other than a quick wander around the streets here - I couldn't afford a drink in a bar here, even if they let me in...which I very much doubt they would with my jeans and bedraggled kids in tow! But here are some pictures that illustrate my ideas:

The interior photos are how I would imagine Cole's Bar 'Mayfair Moon' to look:

Meanwhile his secret unofficial lair is a nightclub, which he ironically calls 'Bite Club'. Bite Club is located in Brixton, South London, which like the rest of London has some stunning historic architecture, but can also have darker undercurrents, and is much more down to earth. If you google Brixton you get flooded with two types of images, riots & clubbing:

We drove through Brixton at 11pm on a Friday night and the place was alive, with young people hanging out, dressed up in rock/goth gear, heading out to rock clubs and live band gigs, it was buzzing and happy, but with graffiti on the walls, and dark backstreets there is a dangerous undercurrent that would perfectly fit my story.