Where and how do creative people work? Here's an insight...

Autumn Barlow, publisher of the historical fiction imprint, Top Hat Books.Here's the space where I work on the books coming through the historical fiction imprint, Top Hat Books. Under the slightly unnerving glass eyes of those two nineteenth-century animal heads, I read, copy-edit and proof a range of books that span a timeline from Ancient Sparta to World War Two, and includes times that never existed at all. The window looks out onto the blank wall of the house next door, though I can also see a tree and a patch of sky. That's good. There are fewer distractions.

I rarely find inspiration at the computer. Yes, I can skip from website to website but to me, that's a transient and fleeting substitute for real impressions. I force myself to leave the desk and seek out human or animal interaction; I absorb art and culture at galleries and theatres; I listen and people-watch and flick through the local paper and popular television channels, so that I know what's important to most people. Inspiration happens away from this desk - like stocking the kitchen store cupboards of my mind - and when I return, I can do the hard work of actually making something from all that.

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