Elizabeth McGregor approaches each project as a journalist — with numerous questions and a drive to find the answers. The only difference is when she doesn't find the answers she can make them up.
That blend of truth and fiction has worked well for the British author, whose books have sold in 17 countries. Her latest novel is "The Girl in the Green Glass Mirror."
"I love to look behind historical events and present them from a personal viewpoint," she said during an e-mail interview. "History can seem very dry on the page, and I like the challenge of unraveling a story and finding the human interest behind it."
The written word has always fascinated McGregor. She remembers standing in bookshops as a young child and being "absolutely thrilled with the whole experience."
Her love of writing essays and drawing was thought somewhat peculiar by her scientifically minded brothers but that didn't stop her from struggling through "Wuthering Heights" at the age of 10.
"I have a vivid memory of trying to read my first books and being impatient to know what everything said. Perhaps it's a form of nosiness. I just have to know what other people are seeing, thinking and feeling."
McGregor started writing her first novel at the age of 18. She became a published author some 20 years later. Since then she has produced two comedies under the pseudonym Holly Fox and nine novels under her own name.
When it's time for McGregor to start a new project — she's working on one now — she doesn't go looking for topics, they creep up on her. "I go through a 'simmering period' where all sorts of subjects appeal. Then there'll be the moment — it's like a sudden crash — when an idea leaps forward or two ideas together. The link between two seemingly unrelated things can be the match to the fire."
McGregor already had a passion for antiques and art when she began her latest novel, "Girl in the Green Glass Mirror." As an artist herself, she hoped to find a way to push readers beyond the visual. "I really wanted to explore the relationship between painter and painting, (and) a painting's power to move and change those who see it."
The second piece of the puzzle came while watching the BBC version of "Antiques Roadshow." One of the segments featured a woman who discovered a 14-by-28 inch watercolor in her attic. It turned out to be a previously unknown work by English painter Richard Dadd.
McGregor learned during the appraisal that many of Dadd's paintings have been lost but not forgotten. This inspired her to learn more. "I was very moved by the story that Dadd had painted most of his work while in Bedlam and Broadmoor — notorious places of incarceration. This was someone possessed by his need to paint, despite working in the most appalling conditions imaginable. When people succeed like that, dare to take on a seemingly impossible task, that gets me thinking."
As she began to research Dadd's mysterious past, McGregor found it difficult to piece together Dadd's inspirations and beliefs. Nothing is known about Dadd's personal feelings. The only insight comes from notes recorded by doctors at Bedlam and Broadmoor. These notes describe him as very educated and perceptive but plagued by personal demons, said McGregor.
Wondering what Dadd really thought about his voices and obsessions caused McGregor to reconstruct what might have happened. She also wanted to show how a present-day discovery about the artist might change lives. She said creating "unknown" works by the artist was the logical outlet for this.
"I made his final 'undiscovered' pictures full of life and positivity, because I imagined him reaching out into the future. He was capable of great sensitivity and often painted pictures for doctors or attendants. I think this is very touching, because it was all he had to give."
It took McGregor eight months to complete "Girl in the Green Glass Mirror." She found the process to be "completely fulfilling and completely exhausting and frustrating, in equal measures. If work has gone well one day, I know it, because I'm walking around in a fog.
"Some things never leave me, such as what it must have been like to travel on the first underground railways under the Thames, what it felt like to be in Syria in 1815 or how it feels to create impossible landscapes and then put them on paper."
In comparison to her other novels, McGregor found writing "Girl in the Green Glass Mirror" uniquely satisfying. "It encompasses my endless fascination with painters and paintings. Dadd is so very unusual and his story so haunting. I hope that people will find the historical thread as fascinating as I do."
E-mail: jharrison@desnews.com