Guest Post: Top Inspirations for Oskar by Hattie Holden-Edmonds (&Giveaway)

Guest Post: Top Inspirations for Oskar by Hattie Holden-Edmonds (&Giveaway)

Hi All!
Today is my stop on the blog tour for The Spectacular Vision of Oskar Dunkelblick and I am here today with a guest post from Hattie Holden-Edmonds.

Title: The Spectacular Vision of Oskar Dunkelblick
Author: Hattie Holden-Edmonds
Publisher: Red Door
Published: 8th November 2018
Pages: 256
Format: ebook
Source:: Review Copy from Publisher
Add It: Amazon UK Goodreads.
Summary: Oskar is the ultimate teenage loner. He s been living on the streets since he was a kid, he hates being touched and his eyes are always itchy from chronic conjunctivitis. To perk himself up, he paints the misery of mankind. After all, there s so much of that about…
One day during a not-so-routine eye test, Oskar s bleak perspective is blown apart when he tries on a pair of very unusual lenses. The world he glimpses is filled with love, light and wonder and he is furious. But those lenses have opened his inner eye and much against his darker nature, Oskar s perception and behaviour begin to change in ways that he could never, ever have imagined.

Top Inspirations for Oskar

I’m a (very amateur) physics geek so the initial inspiration for the story came from a quote from the German physicist M iax Planck: When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at will change. That sparked the idea for a pair of spectacle lenses, which would give the wearer ‘fresh eyes’, erasing their limited (and often negative) view of the world and enabling them to see the bigger picture.

I’m also fascinated by the relationship between mind and matter. To what extent can our thoughts, beliefs and consciousness affect our environment and those around us? Cutting-edge science is just beginning to reveal glimpses of what sages, mystics and visionaries have always claimed: that how we choose to see the world has a direct effect on what we will see. The neuroscientist David Eagleman, who had a 6-part BBC documentary series on exactly this subject, was a big inspiration for me.

The character of Oskar had been lurking around for some time. He was originally in my first novel, but he was so mouthy and mean that he tended to dominate everything. I eventually cut him out but he didn’t seem to want to go away. So when I needed a super-cynical young guy, someone who delights in other people’s misery, to play the lead in this second book, Oskar was already waiting impatiently in the wings.

Like Oskar, I’m intrigued by the subject of illness (no idea why) and I’m also a bit of a hypochondriac. Weirdly, while I was writing the book, I developed conjunctivitis – something that Oskar suffers from. Having no prior knowledge of the symptoms, I immediately thought it was cancer of the eyeball (my left eyeball looked much bigger in the mirror). Some major fretting followed: Will I be forced to have my eyeball removed and wear a glass one? Will it match the other one? How heavy will it be? Have they developed swivelling eyeballs yet so you don’t have to stare straight ahead all the time? Could it spontaneously pop out, say, in the middle of a party or when I’m doing a school talk in front of 400 students?

I obviously had to Google Glass or Prosthetic eyeballs (which aren’t actually made of glass but some kind of plastic acrylic, a relief because that means it wouldn’t be so heavy). There are lots of forums and support groups out there. My favourite, LostEye.com, answered every possible question you’ll ever have about fake eyeballs, so now I’m quite an expert. They’re not cheap though – minimum £2,000 a pop.

Giveaway

To win a copy of the book (UK ONLY), all you need to do is RT the below tweet!
Ends 16th November 2018 at midnight.
Open to UK Only.
Participants must be 13 or older.
The prize is sponsored by Red Door Publishing and will be sent by them.

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