This morning I was enjoying reading today’s story in the Discovering Diamonds December Story from a Song series  If you haven’t been reading these – a new story inspired by a song every day until the New Year – then do have a look. At the end of each story you’ll find links to all the others.

Today’s story was called The Hunter, written by the fabulous award-winning writer, Jean Gill, who lives in France and, among many other things, keeps bees. I really enjoyed reading her fantasy tale of a brave woman scaling a cliff on which her father had perished the previous year, in order to harvest the wild honey for her tribe. It’s a very atmospheric story and I discovered from it that honey from the nectar of rhododendrons is much prized for its hallucinogenic properties! Read Jean’s story here

As I was enjoying Jean’s story, I remembered I had written about harvesting wild honey myself – but I’d completely forgotten! It was in my second novel Kurinji Flowers and is part of a pivotal scene in the book. I was inspired to write it when I came across some wild honey hives high up in trees, when I was finishing the book on a research trip to India in 2013.

If you’d like to read the extract from Kurinji Flowers about the wild honey and find out more about what inspired the scene, I’ve created a Bublish Book Bubble – see below. You’ll need to scroll through it to reach the Insight and the Extract – or you can read it more easily using this link

Kurinji Flowers is the only book (so far) that I’ve written in the first person (but watch this space! – another is coming soon). I loved writing it – probably because it gave me an excuse to go back to India to finish the book. You can read how I first came to write it here  as well as more about the location here.

Here’s a photo I took of the tree hives when I was in India.

And if you’d like to read my story in the Story from a Song series, it’s called Zipless, is not historical and it’s described by Helen Hollick of Discovering Diamonds as “steamy”. I can assure you it isn’t autobiographical! Read Zipless now – and guess the song that inspired it.