Paul McCartney, Mick Jagger and James Brown: My First Muses By Diane Chamberlain

International bestselling author, Diane Chamerlain talks about her early muses.

Growing up, I spent two months every summer in our family bungalow at the Jersey Shore. The setting for our little summer home was heaven on earth. We lived on a canal that connected a bay to the Atlantic Ocean. Our little piece of paradise was surrounded by scrubby woods and plentiful blueberry bushes that supplemented our breakfast each morning. Our yard was made of pure white sand. We’d kick our shoes off when we arrived in late June and, except for church on Sunday, wouldn’t put them on again until our return to the city in early September. My days consisted of swimming, fishing, crabbing and reading. There was only one problem with our summer home: I was lonely there. I had friends in the town where I lived during the school year, but our little dead end dirt road offered few kids my age, so I found myself alone each summer with only my imagination for company.

The summer I was fourteen, I stopped being alone. That was the summer I discovered music, and more specifically, musicians. My adolescent crushes began in earnest and they kept me good company. First it was Paul McCartney. Then I quickly moved from the safety of sweet Paul to the more dangerous Mick Jagger, and finally to the consummate sex machine, James Brown, although, truth be told, I still didn’t have a clue what sex was all about. All I knew was that these guys excited me and it was fun to make up stories in which I was older and prettier. I had breasts and good hair and no glasses, and I would meet one of them and marry him and we’d both be virgins on our wedding night (I knew that was very important). We’d have lots of children. Over the course of that summer, my fantasies took on a life of their own. I began including my girlfriends in my imaginings. I saw us in our late teens living in a much bigger version of my summer house with Paul and Mick and James. While, in reality, I sat alone on the bulkhead of the canal tending my crab trap, I made up situations my friends and I and the guys would get into. I sometimes worried that I was crazy, but the fun my imagination provided was seductive and much more intriguing than my lonely reality. Perhaps only another writer can understand how such fantasies grow and take on power and become, well, addictive.

[amazon_link id=”1447298535″ target=”_blank” ][/amazon_link]My muses stayed with me through that summer and into the school year, when I often got in trouble for daydreaming in class. They stayed with me into the next summer and the following school year, with no sign of letting go. Over the next few years, however, Paul, Mick and James morphed into completely fictional men and my girlfriends and I morphed into completely fictional women. The stories I was creating in my mind became complex, deeper and far more emotional. I recall a history teacher asking me why my eyes were filled with tears as we read about World War II. He probably thought I’d lost a relative in that war. I don’t recall what I told him, but I know I didn’t tell him the truth—that my mind was in a big house at the Jersey Shore where my protagonist had just been betrayed by her lover. It’s incredible that I made it through high school with a decent grade point average.

By the time I was in my mid twenties, I had created a world inside my head filled with a complicated group of people who wanted their story to be told to someone other than me. Yet by then, I had a marriage and a career as a clinical social worker to attend to, so it wasn’t until my early thirties that I allowed those persistent characters to go public. While waiting for a doctor’s appointment, I began writing their story–by hand on lined yellow paper. The doctor was four hours late and I couldn’t have been happier. His tardiness led to the birth of my first novel, Private Relations, about a group of people living together in a big house at the Jersey Shore.

It’s ironic that my twenty-fourth novel, ‘Pretending to Dance’, is about a fourteen-year-old girl, Molly, who has her own obsession with musicians. In her case it’s The New Kids on the Block who feed her fantasies, since the year is 1990. Molly’s obsession is only the backdrop of her story, however, as her idyllic summer with her loving family takes an ominous and perplexing turn. I understand Molly and her need to hold onto her muses while her confusing world moves around her. I understand her very well.

I like to say that the imagination that got me into trouble as a kid now pays my mortgage. It’s the truth and I’m grateful for those early muses who fed my creativity. I can never think of Paul or Mick or James without whispering under my breath, “Thanks, guys. I couldn’t have done it without you.”

You can pre-order Diane’s latest book [amazon_link id=”1447298535″ target=”_blank” ]Pretending to Dance’ from Amazon [/amazon_link] and will be available to buy from good booshops from 8th October 2015.