Masha du Toit

Last week Friday I finished the first draft of the book I’m writing at the moment, the sequel to The Story Trap which has the working title : “The Broken Path”.

Over the months I’ve been writing about it I’ve been collecting images to inspire myself, and articles too.  One of the things I though up for this book is a container ship nick-named “The Garbage Queen” that is filled with trash, and that nobody really wants to take responsibility for.  But apparently, there are ships like that: Here is one I came across today:

A quote from the article: “A few weeks ago we reported that dozens of containers of trash were shipped from Britain to Brazil under the pretense that they were filled with plastics for recycling. They weren’t. They were filled with trash. Brazil got pretty peeved and now we’ve caught wind that they’ve finally shipped the waste back to the UK where it’ll be disposed of properly.”

Here are some images I found here and there online, that I found inspiring:

An image from The Selby that I thought approached what one of my character’s (a witch called Helen) living space might look like:

Homelessness is an important part of The Broken Path, and I found many haunting images such as this one by Lee Jeffries:

Here is another evocative image, that helped me understand what another of my characters might be feeling when she experiences a trance.  This one was created by Moonywolf:

As in The Story Trap, African folk tales are important and of course, there is Eland.  This image is, I believe, from a rock painting in Namibia.

The theme of plastic pollution is continued in The Broken Path.  This striking image was taken by 16 year old Mary Ann Tablante in the Philippines.

And to balance the pollution images, is this magical image by Sandara:

So — to work!  Now I’ve got to work my way through the story again and make sure that it all makes sense.