"Deprivation is for me what daffodils were to Wordsworth" - Philip Larkin.
As well as being a superb quote, and summing up beautifully what Larkin's poems are all about, this hits on a key point when it comes to writing. What inspires you?

I get inspired by all sorts of things, most of them suprisingly mundane: a conversation I overhear on the bus, something that I read that really strikes a chord with me, or just the world around me. For the murder mystery genre, the large majority of the time reality is extremely important. Yes it's fictional, but readers want something that's believable; it's not fantasy and often what is so effective about a novel is that it is plausible, that it could happen.

Often I base events, places, and people on real life - that's not to say that I copy real life, but more that I'm inspired by it. One of the settings in Brown Leather Shoes, for example, is Domsville Park. There's a park near where my family live, as there is in many towns, with a boating lake and flower beds and a park for children, the expected features, and I had this park and many others that I've visited in mind when I created Domsville Park...although obviously I added my own touches. It's the same with the characters; I choose character traits from real life, and weave them into my own creations.
"When creating a novel a writer should create living people; people not characters. A character is a caricature" - Ernest Hemingway.

Whether it's daffodils or deprivation, every writer is inspired by something (even if they're not aware of it), and I think that in many ways that helps to create their unique style of writing. So what inspires you?