Inspiration from Abroad

I've been pretty much non-existent on this blog (and my other blog, too)--I've been out of town for the past six weeks. I've spent time in London, Paris, the Netherlands, Prague and Vienna...but my mind was never very far from my book.

I don't go on vacation specifically to get inspiration. But it tends to come where I least expect it. I found it hiding in the shadows in the catacombs beneath Paris. I found it walking next to the Seine and the Thames.

My main character sees things others can't. She can see ghosts. She can walk down a street in contemporary (well, contemporary to HER) London and suddenly be standing on a street in Roman London. When she crosses London Bridge on a clear spring day, she can smell the smoke from a bridge fire that killed 200 people, 200 years ago.

So as I walked through these haunted cities, I kept thinking of how she would see them. I thought of the ghosts that could still be floating just below the surface of these famous rivers--maybe they're rising from the shadows now, trying the light, and the only reason I can't see them myself is that I wasn't built to. I thought of the things she would see walking down a typical street in Paris. Or near Notre Dame.

One thing's for sure: she'd stay the heck away from the catacombs.

So now I'm waiting for revisions back from my first draft of the story--and I already have plenty of ideas for how to make it better. How do your travels inform your writing?