# Authors - What was the inspiration behind your book? Readers want to know!



## Miriam Minger (Nov 27, 2010)

Hi fellow authors!  I thought it would be fun for readers to know the inspiration behind your novels.  

For my ten historical/adventure romances, inspiration came in many guises.  Secrets of Midnight, now on sale for 99 cents, was a tribute to my best friend Barbi and our long-standing friendship since high school.  We were both Army brats (the chaplain's daughter and the general's daughter!) and have lived all over the U.S. and rarely see each other, but our friendship remains deep and abiding to this day.  

Secrets of Midnight was followed by its sequel, My Runaway Heart, the Regency era stories about two best friends, Corie and Lindsay, and their vow to each other not to marry until they meet the men of their dreams.  Of course things don't go exactly as they planned, but when did the course of true love ever run smoothly?  


So tell us.  What was your inspiration?  

Miriam Minger


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## Dan Holloway (Dec 18, 2010)

Great thread. My inspirations come from various places from book to book

Songs from the other Side of the Wall is a coming of age tale based in post-communist Europe (loosely structured like Murakami's Noregian Wood) - my inspiration comes from being a first year undergraduate in 1989, sitting in the common room watching the Berlin Wall come down - ever since I've been fascinated by the counter=pulls of the old and the new for those living in Eastern Europe

The Company of Fellows is a thriller set in Oxford - absolutely NOT inspired by any of my old tutors  

(life razorblades included is a collection of short stories and poems that celebrate the complexity of life by looking at the darkest subjects - I was inspired to put it together after hearing my friend and fellow-author Katelan Foisy talking about her best friend's OD death, and my own best friend's suicide attempt last year - I felt a desperate need to celebrate life but without pulling any punches or ducking any important questions.


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## Bob Mayer (Feb 20, 2011)

I remember the moment of conception of every book I've written.

Atlantis: What if the force that destroyed Atlantis is back to destroy our world?
Area 51: My ex-wife told me that the no-fly zone over Area 51 was as highly rated as White House.
Chasing The Ghost: What secrets does a murdered woman hold behind her facade of respectability?
The Gate: What if the Japanese actually developed an atomic bomb during WWII, detonated one, and where is the second?
The Line: As a West Point graduate, what if there really was an inner circle of Grads, who since Patton's death had been controlling the country?
Bodyguard of Lies: Who polices the world of covert operations?
The Omega Missile: One ICBM has a payload that isn't a missile but a doomsday device that can launch every nuclear weapon our country has (unfortunately not fiction, but fact).
Next books out on 12 April, the 150th anniversary of the start of the Civil War: *Duty-Honor-Country*-- a trilogy about the fact that 55 of the 60 major battles in the Civil War were commanded by West Point graduates. Why did some go for honor and some for loyalty?


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## Miriam Minger (Nov 27, 2010)

That's a very cool way to think of it...the moment of conception.  It's like a flash sometimes that hits you, and I always figured if the idea stuck around long enough in my head, it was worth a story.  

Keep 'em coming, authors.  

Miriam Minger


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## Beatriz (Feb 22, 2011)

Miriam Minger said:


> Hi fellow authors! I thought it would be fun for readers to know the inspiration behind your novels.
> 
> For my ten historical/adventure romances, inspiration came in many guises. Secrets of Midnight, now on sale for 99 cents, was a tribute to my best friend Barbi and our long-standing friendship since high school. We were both Army brats (the chaplain's daughter and the general's daughter!) and have lived all over the U.S. and rarely see each other, but our friendship remains deep and abiding to this day.
> 
> ...


My mother, brother and childhood, fraught by many problems and vicissitudes but very rich in drama.


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## Edward C. Patterson (Mar 28, 2009)

One of my books series is inspired by my Master's dissertation in Sinology (the founding of the Southern Dung Dynasty 1127-1164), and sparked the beginnings of the novel 37 years ago. 

Another was inspired by two friends who suffered through the AIDS crisis.

Several have been inspired by Gay community issues.

One is inspired by my own stint in the US Army as an in the closet gay man before Don't Ask, Don't Tell..

The Jade Owl was inspired by a little glass owl that was accidentally left in my mother's Christmas ornament box, and then subsequently left on my kitchen table when I was thrashing around for an idea. 1,400,000 words land 4 of 5 books later . . . 

My upcoming work is inspired by my army stint in Grafenwöhr Germany in 1967-68, mashed up with a lively study of what happens when imaginations get the better of people.

I have a book inspired by Herman Melville's Moby Dick and a gay internet stripper, who I had the pleasure to interview (over the course of several weeks).   (It was expensive . . . and not Moby Dick).

I have a novel inspired by the hypocrisy of organizations and the many which I've belonged to (in this case Gay Activist groups). It's a comedy.

I have a work inspired by young men I knew coming out at age 17 and telling their story at a rap session. (My best selling novel).

Most of my novels take place in locations (some very exotic) that I have visited or lived in, and history, especially Chinese history is paramount in many.

I have a SciFi Paranormal novel coming up inspired by my Cherokee heritage. (Go figure). It might become a series, but Book One has languished for seven years now.

I often think that everything in my life has accosted me for the last 50 years to inspire me to write something. But that's the short of the long of it . . . 


Edward C. Patterson


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## Nathan Lowell (Dec 11, 2010)

My main space opera series was inspired by the notion that there are no "little" stories in science fiction much these days and wanted to see if I could tell compelling stories about life in a space faring future that didn't involve saving the universe every fifty pages or killing off planets full of people -- human or alien. I wondered what it would be like if we sent out an airline instead of an air force. What would the stories be? What would that universe look like? Almost a million words later, the books are doing pretty well in print but continue to gain momentum in audio. 

My fantasy novel was a "challenge book" laid down my by friend and colleage Mur Lafferty who challenged me to finish NaNoWriMo in half the month, by a beta reader who had been pestering me to write a female MC, and a fellow writer who dared me to do fantasy. I rolled them all into one challenge and the result was released in audio in January 2010.


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## Raybrite (Feb 9, 2011)

My only booklet out now was a trial of something I knew a little about to see if I could do it.
The book I am working on now is inspired by my son and the stories we read each night and adventures in my mind.
I also have an idea of one based on my wife playing the Lotto for a few coins wherever we have the chance.
After that, they just pop into my mind when I cannot write them down (in the shower, driving and things like that.)


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## Carol R (Feb 26, 2011)

My inspiration hit me like a ton of bricks. Imagery from dreams and day dreams just needed to have a life.
I have been a classical pianist all my life (I'm 55) and one afternoon I just had to get to my computer and start to write. It spewed out and it keeps on coming. It's ecstacy.


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## Y. K. Greene (Jan 26, 2011)

I wish I could pinpoint a single moment of inspiration but it's not like that for me. Usually I get an interesting glimmer of an idea while I'm doing "other things" and at that point most of the time I'm busy and trying to forget it. If it's a really persistent bugger, it keeps popping into my mind with a little more flavor or depth. 

Eventually I catch myself mulling it over like a fine wine, trying to discern deeper notes to it's flavor, trying to decide if it's a short story or something bigger. If it's a short story, usually I spit it out as soon as I can to make room for something else. But novels are harder, larger. Usually they end up with a folder and a few scenes and snippets accumulate over the years while I try to do "other things." At some point I try to put all the pieces together into a seamless whole, or at least that's the plan. 

It's really pretty nebulous even when I'm working eight hours a day to try and give it a more concrete form.


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## DavidRM (Sep 21, 2010)

Most of my stories don't often come from a single inspirational source.

The Summoning Fire came out of:

An RPG character I enjoyed playing.
The urge to blow up the town where I live and overrun the Midwest "Red States" with devils and gargoyles.
A story related to me about how an Iraq war vet came home to find his wife had stripped him of everything.
A love of old pump-action shotguns.
An irritation with bad guys that show restraint and constantly whine about how they hate themselves.

And more besides. 

The Girl Who Ran With Horses, though, has a somewhat more singular soure. That book grew out of some characters and situations suggested to me by my (then) 13-year-old niece. She loves horses. She loves Antlers, Oklahoma. She loves barrel racing. So I researched all of those to write her a story she would enjoy. She liked it. And the cover painting is based on a photo I took of her with her horse, Cherokee.

-David


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## JoeMitchell (Jun 6, 2010)

I had an eye-opening experience when I learned that my friend was a volunteer fireman for the small rural town I was living in.  Him?!?  He was drunk or stoned half the time, and barely out of high school.  Someone let him fight fires?  I asked him about it and he told me it was almost like a social club.  They hung out at the firehouse and drank beers while playing cards and having a good time, and sometimes they went out and fought fires to defend the town, even while drunk.  The town even provided them with a free case of beer occasionally, as a thank-you for their brave service.  This was not at all like the big-city professional firemen I'd known, but for this tiny rural town, it worked.

That was about 20 years ago, but it always stuck with me.  When I decided to write Shard Mountain, I used this as a model for the town's volunteer police department, which also fought fires.  The town provides them all the free food and beer they want, so long as they're on duty.  The town sees them as heroes, despite some of them being in it just for the free beer and good times.


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## Rai Aren (Apr 26, 2009)

I love this topic! I find it very interesting to hear about what inspired a story. It gives added depth and meaning to the book, and gives me, as a reader, a more intimate sense of what motivated and inspired the author. I often appreciate a book I enjoyed even more when I read about what initial idea brought it to life.

The inspiration behind *SECRET OF THE SANDS*, was a program I happened to see on the Discovery Channel where archaeologists were debating the actual age of the Great Sphinx. One of them was giving reasons as to why he thought it was much, much older than the history books state - possibly by thousands of years. My co-author & I had been fascinated by ancient Egypt since we were little kids, so when I saw this, it hit me like a bolt of thunder, I knew we had to write a story with that theory as the basis.

We are also big fans of movies like the Indiana Jones series & The Mummy, and we have been forever hooked on epic stories like the Star Wars and the Lord of the Rings movies, so we wanted to combine an epic feel that had some serious elements in it with a balance of lightness, humor and action. Those were the kinds of stories that have stayed with us, so we wrote a story that we ourselves, would enjoy. It's been immensely gratifying to read letters from fans who loved the book - it's really been a dream come true... 

Share on, people!

~Rai


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## SuzanneTyrpak (Aug 10, 2010)

*Dating My Vibrator (and other true fiction)* is a collection of nine short stories inspired by dating, divorce and desperation. Laughing is good therapy. 

My novel, *Vestal Virgin*, is suspense in ancient Rome. Conceived on a trip to Rome, with help from a travel book (which said Vestal Virgins were sworn to 30 years of chastity on penalty of death) and an overactive imagination. Plus, Nero and his family are always a great for inspiration: murder, incest, unlimited power...what's not to like?


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## Vianka Van Bokkem (Aug 26, 2010)

I was into vampires, werewolves, witches and Mythology since I was in elementary school.  




-Vianka Van Bokkem


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## Vivi_Anna (Feb 12, 2011)

Cool thread.

My indie book GLIMMER, was inspired by the art of Brian Froud.  He does the good faeries/bad faeries books.  Love the light and darkness of his work. The duality of it.  That duality inspired me to create my main character Nina Decker, who is fighting her own duality.

Other books...

Valorian Chronicles (6 books in the series) inspired by CSI

Hell Kat/Inferno - inspired by Mad Max.


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## Miriam Minger (Nov 27, 2010)

Carol R said:


> My inspiration hit me like a ton of bricks. Imagery from dreams and day dreams just needed to have a life.
> I have been a classical pianist all my life (I'm 55) and one afternoon I just had to get to my computer and start to write. It spewed out and it keeps on coming. It's ecstacy.


I'm absolutely loving all these responses. Inspiration has always been a mystery to me, i.e., where it comes from, what to do with it. Yes, it is ecstacy to free what's inside you with words--no matter who might ultimately read them.

My medieval Ireland historical romance, Wild Angel, was inspired by hearing Voodoo Chile by Jimi Hendrix. That's it. Just that one song. Listening to Voodoo Chile, I could just see in my mind's eye these native Irish rebels crashing through the woods on their sweating horses after a raid against the conquering Normans. Pure adrenaline rush, exhilaration, triumph, swords wet with blood. I was blown away by that wild image and simply began to write.



Miriam Minger


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## JD Rhoades (Feb 18, 2011)

Like the protagonist in LAWYERS, GUNS AND MONEY, I'm an attorney practicing in a small town. There the resemblance ends,  mostly...I don't have two ex-wives or a drinking problem, and no one's tried to kill me. Yet. 

But I did want to give readers some of the flavor of what it's like, that combination of cynicism and idealism you need to develop to survive, and how easy it can be to lose your way. (Another book that really gets it right is George V. Higgins' KENNEDY FOR THE DEFENSE, which has always been a big inspiration for me.) 

And I wanted to show people why having an innocent client is, sometimes, the worst thing in the world.


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## Carolyn J. Rose Mystery Writer (Aug 10, 2010)

Hemlock Lake was inspired by my childhood in the Catskill Mountains, some of the people I knew back then, and the feeling that the world was growing and changing--and that not everyone thought that was a good thing.


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## William Meikle (Apr 19, 2010)

Here's why I wrote THE INVASION

The first science fiction I ever encountered was Fireball XL5, one of the early Gerry Anderson productions. I was only about four years old, but I was hooked immediately on spaceships and adventure in the stars. I grew up during the exciting part of the space race, staying up nights to watch space-walks then moon missions, eyes wide in wonder as Armstrong made his small step. At the same time Gerry Anderson had continued to thrill me, with Stingray, Thunderbirds and Captain Scarlet. The Americans joined in, with Lost in Space then, as color TV reached Scotland, Star Trek hit me full between the eyes. 

Also at the same time, my reading was gathering pace. I'd started on comics early with Batman and Superman. As the '60s drew to a close, Marvel started to take over my reading habits more, and I made forays into reading novels; Clarke and Asimov at first, and most of the Golden-Age works. By the early Seventies I had graduated to the so-called New Wave, Moorcock, Ellison, Delaney and Zelazny dominating my reading, and they led me on to reading, then writing horror.

I more or less stopped reading Science Fiction round about then, but I never stopped watching, especially after Star Wars gave the visual genre a huge push forward. I re-discovered the '50s classics after the advent of the VCR and quickly built a huge collection of movies, many of which I still watch avidly.

Which brings me, in a long winded manner, to the novella, The Invasion. Invasions, and the resulting carnage, have always loomed big in my favorites of the genre, through War of the Worlds, Earth vs Flying Saucers, the original V series and even the spectacular failure of Independence Day. Neil Jackson asked me if I was interested in writing a four-part serial, and laid out a basic timeline. I ran with it, and soon discovered that I had a story to tell.

To regresss slightly, another part of my early reading, and the one that united my Science Fiction reading with my horror reading, was the works of H P Lovecraft. I realised that the Invasion in my story would have Lovecraftian antecedents, in that it would come from space, and be completely uncaring of the doings of the human race. My training as a biologist also made me realise that aliens should be -really- alien, not just simulcra of pre-existing terrestrial forms. Once I had that in my mind, it didn't take much to come up with a "color out of space" that would engulf the planet.

Most Invasion movies concentrate on the doings in big cities, and with the involvement of the full force of the military. I wanted to focus more on what it would mean for the people. Living as I am in Canada, in a remote Eastern corner, I was able to draw on local knowledge and home in on people already used to surviving in extreme conditions. I just upped the ante.

An interest in conspiracy theories and post-apocalypse survivalists also gave me one of the main characters, and the early parts of the story are a news report from the bunker where he has retreated to ride out whatever is coming. So come with me, to a winter storm in the Maritimes, where a strange green snow is starting to fall.


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## Amanda Brice (Feb 16, 2011)

The book I'll be releasing in April (see avatar) was inspired by recalling how much I loved the Satin Slippers series (about teenage girls at a ballet boarding school) as a preteen. But then I thought it would be fun if those same aspiring dancers got involved in solving mysteries.


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## Guest (Feb 27, 2011)

I needed something to do to look cool while I sat in Starbucks.


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## Sarah Nasello (Feb 18, 2011)

YK Greene said:


> I wish I could pinpoint a single moment of inspiration but it's not like that for me. Usually I get an interesting glimmer of an idea while I'm doing "other things" and at that point most of the time I'm busy and trying to forget it. If it's a really persistent bugger, it keeps popping into my mind with a little more flavor or depth.
> 
> Eventually I catch myself mulling it over like a fine wine, trying to discern deeper notes to it's flavor, trying to decide if it's a short story or something bigger. If it's a short story, usually I spit it out as soon as I can to make room for something else. But novels are harder, larger. Usually they end up with a folder and a few scenes and snippets accumulate over the years while I try to do "other things." At some point I try to put all the pieces together into a seamless whole, or at least that's the plan.
> 
> It's really pretty nebulous even when I'm working eight hours a day to try and give it a more concrete form.


Such a good question. I second YK's thoughts.

Sometimes I'll get an idea and mull it over for months. If I decide to pursue it, I'll usually try to find some music that relates to the story - either by the tone of the piece, or its lyrics. I'll compile a playlist, listen to it over and over throughout the day, and watch the story unfold in my mind. I find music to be a big help when trying to piece a story together.


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## William Meikle (Apr 19, 2010)

Another one of mine, ISLAND LIFE came from Lovecraft's Deep Old Ones. Like some people are with spiders or creepy-crawlies, I am with pale things that lurk beneath. It stems from childhood nightmares and a mixture of Morlocks, Tolkein's goblins, the Creature from the Black Lagoon and HPL. Those all got mashed up in my mind and led to the creatures that rampage in Island Life. I threw in some references in the book to those inspirations as a way of paying homage.

The location actually came from a visit to a lighthouse on Lundy Island in the Bristol Channel. The lighthouse had a neolithic burial ground at its base. I lined up a camera shot to have standing stones in the foreground and the lighthouse in the background. Then I started to wonder who would live in the lighthouse and what was under the standing stones, and that's when the story began to run in my head. Then all I had to do was write it down


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## Ashley Lynn Willis (Jan 27, 2011)

SarahNdipitous said:


> Sometimes I'll get an idea and mull it over for months. If I decide to pursue it, I'll usually try to find some music that relates to the story - either by the tone of the piece, or its lyrics. I'll compile a playlist, listen to it over and over throughout the day, and watch the story unfold in my mind. I find music to be a big help when trying to piece a story together.


Isn't it great how music can inspire an entire story? Or at least help keep it humming along at a nice pace. I second your music muse, Sara.


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## Mary Pat Hyland (Feb 14, 2011)

"3/17" was inspired by my experiences as a traditional Irish musician playing St. Patrick's Day gigs over the past two decades. From the viewpoint of the stage, I've witnessed some bizarre ways that people commemorate the feast day of Ireland's patron saint. (Shall we start with the concept of _*green * _  beer?? Sacrilege! ) 
I love the traditional folk music of Ireland-its haunting airs played on uilleann pipes, feather-light slip jigs and toe-tapping reels. People are missing so much when they settle for the Americanized Tin Pan Alley-era songs. There's so much more to Irish culture than the circus mirror version we're served up in the States.
I'm a longtime student of the Irish language, Gaeilge-even studied at a school in Connemara, and use it in all my works (three novels, a collection of short stories not yet published). My books include lexicons at the end for Irish phrases and slang used throughout.
*Sláinte! (Cheers!)*


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## Miriam Minger (Nov 27, 2010)

For our readers, you see from the posts so far that there is always a story behind the story.  Please feel free to join in with questions or comments for any of the authors who've shared their stories of inspiration.  It can be a bit like baring one's soul.

Miriam Minger


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## R. H. Watson (Feb 2, 2011)

I always liked the idea that, as much as people want the future be predictable, it isn't, and that includes scientific discovery. In this case, I thought it would be funny if, due to an unexpected discovery in genetic engineering, it became possible for women, and only women, to play and survive gladiatorial sports. I loved imagining all those frustrated male egos having to sit and watch girls do what they desperately wanted to do. I think the kernel of this idea showed up when American Gladiators was first on TV. I had my premiss.

Before that I was living in New York City and had several women friends who were dancers. They were dedicated, smart, creative, and often at least a little bit insane. Given the opportunity to adopt this fantasy genetic technology, it wasn't hard to imagine them moving from contact improvisation workshops to sword fighting. I had believable characters.

It only took another 20 years or so, before I wrote the story.


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## Miriam Minger (Nov 27, 2010)

My very first historical/adventure romance, Twin Passions, was inspired by a trip to Norway at the impressionable age of 17 with my grandmother Bodvild to visit relatives. Ever the romantic, at every turn I envisioned Vikings and their dragon ships sailing along the fjords. I even fell in love with a Norwegian sailor, Egil. Of course I had to set my first novel in that ruggedly beautiful country that so inspired me.

A few years later I wrote another Viking novel, The Pagan's Prize, but this one was set in medieval Russia when Vikings roamed the rivers that flowed from the north of Rus Land to Byzantium. Just love Vikings, I guess. 

Miriam Minger

_[Sorry, no links to your books in the body of the post outside the Book Bazaar, it consitutes self promotion. --Betsy]_


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## William Meikle (Apr 19, 2010)

As for BERSERKER...

Big beasties fascinate me. 

Some of that fascination stems from early film viewing. I remember being taken to the cinema to see The Blob. I couldn't have been more than seven or eight, and it scared the crap out of me. The original incarnation of Kong has been with me since around the same time. Similarly, I remember the BBC showing re-runs of classic creature features late on Friday nights, and THEM! in particular left a mark on my psyche. I've also got a Biological Sciences degree, and even while watching said movies, I'm usually trying to figure out how the creature would actually work in nature -- what would it eat? How would it procreate? What effect would it have on the environment around it?

On top of that, I have an interest in cryptozoology, of creatures that live just out of sight of humankind, and of the myriad possibilities that nature, and man's dabbling with it, can throw up.

I also love Vikings -- tales of death and honor, blood and glory have always stirred my soul.

All those things were going round in my head when I first sat down to write Berserker. So come with me, to a cold fjord in Northern Russia, where three Viking longships arrive at the place where the hairy ones dance...


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## AmyJ (Feb 16, 2011)

Soul Quest was inspired by a really weird dream.  My hubby is a night owl and loves to stay up late watching the history channel.  I had this dream about a "little boy" standing in the middle of mirrored room. The little boy looked just like my son did when he was just 3 years old with his cute chubby cheeks, curly blond ringlets and beautiful hazel green eyes.  Anyway, the little boy was watching images flicker on the mirrored walls in the room.  They showed images from historical disasters (Hitler's dictatorship, Martin Luther King Jr. and Kennedy's shootings... you get the gist.  Anyway, it had a major impact on me.  The next day I asked my husband what he was watching and he said it was a special episode on the history channel dedicated to the worst events in history.  He acknowledged all of the above mentioned tragedies were part of the episode. I suppose as a mother the dream was symbolic of the wrath of the world posing a threat against my children. Anyway, I decided to turn it into a positive thing.  So... my little boy became Hala, the Great Spirit (a being as old as time itself who resembles a child) and the quest for justice against evil began.  Since I work with teenagers it was only natural that they become the heroes in the plot.  The basis of the book is good verses but I tried to weave into the underlying tone... Life is about choices, good and bad. What kind of choices will you make?


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## Philip Chen (Aug 8, 2010)

I've discussed this elsewhere, but here's the recap. In 1990, I had a series of horrible nightmares about gangs of what looked like ordinary Americans attacking buildings and killing other citizens. I say buildings destroyed and people dying horrendous deaths. I wrote _Falling Star_ in 1990-1991 in about one and one half months and have been trying to get it published since.

For twenty years my book was rejected by agents and publishers alike because they said, "it wasn't strong enough". I now understand that they probably thought that my premise that foreign agents could live in the US for decades, marry innocent Americans, raise children, buy homes, and assume the identities of dead babies was preposterous. Thing like that just don't happened; especially not in the US! Until, of course, it happened in June 2010, when Russian spies were found to be doing exactly what my fictional spies had been doing for twenty years. The only difference was that my spies didn't grow hydrangeas. One of my foreign agents was even a gorgeous female who posed as a financial consultant. I decided to publish in August 4, 2010 just in case any more of my story got played out in prime time news, like that mysterious missile launch off of Santa Catalina Island.

My claim can be challenged, of course, and it should be. I simply respond to skeptics that they should go to http://scribd.com/PhilC68 and read the excerpts of my novel that I started posting in May 2009, including segments on these spies.


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## Guest (Feb 28, 2011)

The one I have out now, which is a longer short, bordering on novella-- My Boyfriend's Back-- was a way for me to wade into self pubbing.  I banged it out and formatted it just to get something up by Valentine's Day.  I am told I have a natural talent for humor, so I did a fun story.  I did have a few screw ups in the manuscript, but I learned a TON.  So it was good for me and I still kind of like the story.  Fun.

My next release (Echo's Lyric, coming later this spring) was written during the darkest time of my life, and set aside.  It was inspired by:

1. My familiar at the time-- a ferret whom I miss every day.  She passed about 12 years ago.
2. My own journey out of darkness.
3. The idea of writing a bildungsroman for young women in which the feminist hero rejects the urge to be saved by anyone or anything but her own strength, courage, and gifts.


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## R. H. Watson (Feb 2, 2011)

Amanda Brice said:


> The book I'll be releasing in April (see avatar) was inspired by recalling how much I loved the Satin Slippers series (about teenage girls at a ballet boarding school) as a preteen. But then I thought it would be fun if those same aspiring dancers got involved in solving mysteries.





IrishMPH said:


> "3/17" was inspired by my experiences as a traditional Irish musician playing St. Patrick's Day gigs over the past two decades. From the viewpoint of the stage, I've witnessed some bizarre ways that people commemorate the feast day of Ireland's patron saint. (Shall we start with the concept of _*green * _  beer?? Sacrilege! )


There are some fascinating inspiration stories here, but these are the two that, so far, most caught my fancy. Amanda, it seems like such a standard mystery trope to come up with an unexpected solver that it's hard to fine one that stands out. I think however, yours may do so. I'll be looking for the book when it's published.

Irish, your comment here, along with the Amazon description and sample, convinced me to drop the 99 cents (what a steal!) and buy the Kindle version.


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## Mike McIntyre (Jan 19, 2011)

*The Scavenger's Daughter* was inspired by a museum exhibit of medieval instruments of torture, many from the Spanish Inquisition. I travel a lot, and I kept bumping into the same exhibit in places like San Gimignano, Italy, and Carcassonne, France. The exhibit-"Inquisition: Torture and Intolerance"-came to my town and became the most popular show in the 100-year history of the San Diego Museum of Man. One day while staring at such cruel contraptions as the Iron Maiden, the Judas Cradle and the Pear of Anguish, I imagined a latter-day Torquemada trying to update the Inquisition. But instead of a medieval torture chamber, the monstrous zealot works out of his self-storage unit.


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## Midnight Writer (Jan 4, 2011)

Lots of interesting stories behind the stories!

For *Starkissed*, it was... What if the hero in a science fiction romance novel isn't just a human-looking man from another planet but really doesn't look human?

For *Jule Reigh and the Jim Stone Affair*, I wanted to write a spy spoof, reminiscent of those old 60s movies, involving an Interpol agent and an international jewel thief. With sex.  And a twist/surprise ending.

For *Immortal Ecstasy*, inspiration came when I was with a small e-press years ago. They had an imprint called "Sons of Zeus". My brain went in its usual peculiar direction and asked... What if a _daughter_ of Zeus disguises herself as a man and the hero, who has never been attracted to men, falls in love with him/her?

Lanette


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## cortney (Jan 16, 2011)

Cool thread.

I got the inspiration for Lost at like 4 in the morning.
So i got out my trusty pocket sized journal out and Boom!!! Lost was born.
It was pretty bad so the next morning I beefed it up and i've been working on it ever since!


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## Holly A Hook (Sep 19, 2010)

Thanks so much for starting this thread!

Tempest--Well, I left some mini burgers from Ruby Tuesday sitting out for three hours before I decided to eat them.  I had a weird dream that night about people who could turn into hurricanes, and came up with the idea for Tempest the next day.  I don't think I could've come up with it any other day.

Rita Morse and the Sinister Shadow--This is based off some ideas I came up with back in high school about immortals trying to oppress teenagers all over the world.


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## Mike McIntyre (Jan 19, 2011)

*The Kindness of Strangers: Penniless Across America* was inspired by a stranded motorist I encountered. This was in the middle of the Nevada desert, on Highway 50, the Loneliest Road in America. I was doing ninety and hadn't passed another car for an hour. Then I saw a young man walking away from a vehicle, his thumb out, a red gas can in his other hand. It was hot. No one else was around. The nearest town was twenty miles east. The guy clearly needed my help.

I blew right by him.

I figured that the gas can was a ploy to get me to stop, that the guy was a highway robber-or worse.

But I drove on through Nevada, then into Utah, thinking about the guy. I was troubled. Not by leaving him in the desert-but by how easily I'd reached the decision. I never lifted my foot off the accelerator.

There was a time in this country when you were a jerk if you passed someone in need. Now you're a fool for helping. Somewhere along the line, I Don't Want to Get Involved became a national motto.

I thought of my final destination, New Orleans, the setting for Tennessee Williams' play, A Streetcar Named Desire. I recalled Blanche's famous line at the end: "Whoever you are-I have always depended on the kindness of strangers."

_The kindness of strangers_. It sounded so quaint. Did such a trait exist in America anymore?

A year later, I decided to put the country to the test. I quit my job in San Francisco, gave away the rest of my money to a panhandler, and walked across the Golden Gate Bridge. My goal was to trek from one end of the country to the other without a penny in my pocket, relying on the kindness of strangers, accepting only rides, food and shelter.

How did America respond to my continental leap of faith? Did it catch me? Or did it let me fall? I don't want to spoil the ending, but I owe a huge thank you to that stranded motorist in the desert.


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## Miriam Minger (Nov 27, 2010)

williemeikle said:


> I also love Vikings -- tales of death and honor, blood and glory have always stirred my soul.
> 
> All those things were going round in my head when I first sat down to write Berserker. So come with me, to a cold fjord in Northern Russia, where three Viking longships arrive at the place where the hairy ones dance...


I think we're kindred souls when it comes to Vikings, Willie.  More great tales of inspiration.

Miriam Minger


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## Carol R (Feb 26, 2011)

The inspiration for my books comes from my own dreams.


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## Jeff Sherratt Novelist (Feb 9, 2011)

My latest novel, Detour to Murder, is based on the old film noir movie Detour. Detour was a penny row film made in 1945 starring Tom Neal and Ann Savage. What makes this movie special is that is what made on a very limited budget and has tons of plot holes. The film was so bad, the copyright was not renewed and it went into the public domain. Here is the interesting part - in the 1970's the film started being viewed by kids in college that thought it was a genius film. It since went on to be the most talked about example of film noir and is one of the Smithsonian's picks to be saved for posterity. Go figure. Anyway, my character, Jimmy O'Brien, revisits the murder and events while trying to free the main character in the film, Al Roberts. If you like film noir and mysteries, you will enjoy Detour and Detour to Murder.


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## William Meikle (Apr 19, 2010)

My Watchers series came from a love of vampires in the movies that stretches back a long way.

I grew up with the sixties explosion of popular culture embracing the supernatural and the weird. Hammer horror movies got me young. And the one that hooked me was Dracula.

I first saw this in about 1970, on BBC2, on an old black and white TV which was about 10 inches square and made everybody look like short fat cubes. But even that didn't detract from the power of this film.
This Hammer horror version sticks fairly closely to Stoker's original novel, and as such is a purist's dream.

Lee plays the Count as no one before or since. His flat demonic stare sems to ooze pure evil. The count has become a cultural icon in the past forty years, and has even been parodied and made fun of (Count Duckula anybody?) but I challenge anybody to look Lee in the eye when he's on the hunt and not feel a frisson of cold terror.

Vampires have been humanised recently (and have even got a soul in Angel's case), but it shouldn't be forgotten that they are bloodsucking bas*ards - that's what they are, that's what they do. The high cheekbones, sex-appeal and good clothes sense are just nice-to-have after thoughts. And in Lee's case you can believe that the bloodsucking is the important part, judging by the relish he shows for the deed.

And just because Buffy can stake a dozen or so without breaking sweat, it shouldn't be forgotten that the vampire is traditionally a great evil force of destruction. Lee never lets you forget it.

Which brings me round to The Watchers trilogy, my retelling of the 1745 Jacobite Rebellion in Britain. Bonnie Prince Charlie, and all his highland army, are Vampires and are heading south to claim the British throne. The "Watchers" of the title are the guards of the old Roman wall built by Hadrian, now reinforced to keep the vamps out. It is constantly patrolled by officers of the Watch, two of whom become the main protagonists of the series. I got the idea on a walk along what is left of the wall, and by the time I'd had finished my walk and had a few beers the first part of the trilogy was fully formed in my head. Think "ZULU" or "Last of the Mohicans" with vamps and you'll get a feel of what I was trying to do.

I was dealing with a retelling of the Bonnie Prince Charlie story, where romantic myths have subsumed the harsh reality of a coup gone badly wrong. I needed to strip all the romance out of the Highlanders and build them up from the bottom. Making them a shambling army of vamps and mindless drones seemed an obvious place to start. The Watchers series is a swashbuckler, but there is little lace and finery. What I do have is blood and thunder, death and glory in big scale battles and small scale heartbreak. I love it.


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## ASparrow (Oct 12, 2009)

Three things inspired Xenolith:

1) An amazing rock I saw in the window of a fossils and minerals shop (a chalcopyrite, to be precise).

2) The abuses of executive power during the Bush years (some of which continue).

3) A desire to escape my (then) present circumstances.


So I wrote an escapist fantasy adventure with a deeply embedded social and political subtext (so buried, some of the character names are anagrams of well-known political figures) -- e.g. Rabelmani). 

Contrary to popular belief, it's NOT prehistoric or about a little bird named Xenolith.


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## Bob Mayer (Feb 20, 2011)

’ve always been fascinated by myths and Atlantis is one of the oldest.  I delved deeper and found there was only one true source mention of it:  by Plato in his dialogues.  Everyone else was riffing off that.

So that was the moment of conception of my Atlantis series:  What if Plato was talking about a real place?  And what if the force that destroyed Atlantis came back to threaten our modern world?

So that’s idea.  What about story?

I was also taking a graduate course in physiological psychology.  In the bicameral mind (The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind—not a beach read) the two sides of the brain mimic each.  But there’s one part, on one side, that doesn’t mimic the same part on the other side—in fact, no one is quite sure what it does.

So.  Now I’ve got Atlantis.  The brain.  And military last stands.  Yes, my mind has some weird parts in it too.  I’ve always been fascinated by them.  But what if they could serve some higher purpose and be connected to a priestess who has a brain that’s different and that area that no one knows what it does—it does something, but only in connection with the spirits of warriors fighting in a doomed battle—do you see how a writer’s mind works?  So I ended up with Custer’s Last Stand, Isandlwana, Pickett’s Charge, the 300 Spartans, a gladiator in the shadow of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD—all eventually were woven into the main storyline.  And, oh yeah, I brought Amelia Earhart back from the dead.  Three times I think.  Well, not back from the dead, but from parallel worlds where she was still alive.

Is your head hurting?  Isn’t this fun?


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## julieannfelicity (Jun 28, 2010)

I love reading this thread! I hope more author's join in.

My inspiration for writing _The Kindness of Strangers_ was all the kids/teens out there who have been through the same situations described in the book. It was partially for my own children. They don't know a lot about my past, or my biological mother's past. They only know the things I tell them. To shield them, I haven't told them very much. I don't think they need to hear all the nitty-gritty details until their older - maybe. The real story isn't as positive as what the book describes. I did that on purpose. When a child is abused, especially by a family member, they learn to build up barriers and trust goes out the window. I wanted to write a story that showed positive things can happen once they've been removed from those experiences/situations.

My niece was actually the inspiration I needed to write _From Heaven_. I'm not entirely sure why, but I believe it has something to do with her parents getting divorced. She's not the same little girl anymore. She's slowly blossoming into an adult and it's intriguing to me to see the things she does, given the choices she has.

_The Last Curl_ was inspired by my desire to open my home to foster children. Having been a foster child myself, practically my entire life, I know what it feels like to be a scared, little child in a stranger's home. I wanted to change my perspective and try to write things from the view of the stranger (aka foster parent). Unfortunately I won't be able to be a foster parent for a long time, but maybe some day.


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## Jan Hurst-Nicholson (Aug 25, 2010)

I was born in the UK and emigrated from Liverpool to South Africa in the 1970s. My experiences moving to a new continent (and those of fellow expats) were the inspiration for my humorous novel '_But Can You Drink The Water?' _

I worked in the R&D department of a large bakery for several years. When I began work there were three large bakeries that had all started as family bakeries. By the time I left they had all been bought out by a large conglomerate and I was reminded of the adage 'clogs to clogs in three generations.' This gave me the idea for '_The Breadwinners,'_ a family saga spanning 50 years and set in Durban.

I like animals, humour, detective stories and mysteries, so when I decided to write a children's book I incorporated all four, plus I wanted to make it educational as this was what publishers were looking for. _Leon Chameleon PI and the case of the missing canary eggs_ is a librarian's nightmare. This was followed by _the case of the kidnapped mouse. _

_Bheki and the magic light_ was inspired by watching the herd boys tending the cattle and then returning to their kraal at sunset. There are still rural areas where children have never experienced electricity, so I had Bheki's father take home a torch, and this was Bheki's magic light.

_
Something to Read on the Plane_ came about after hearing numerous people come into the charity bookshop where I worked to look for 'something to read on the plane'. I put together some of my previously published humorous articles and short stories, added some malapropisms, a quiz, an agony aunt column, a couple of limericks and 50 reasons for feeling fifty and put them into a pocket-sized book and I sell at them at airport bookshops (only in SA unfortunately - wish I could get them worldwide )


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## Adria Townsend (Feb 24, 2011)

Freiburg, Germany!  My husband got a Fulbright Grant to do research there, and I did my own research and wrote my historical romance To Conquer the Heart of a King.  Freiburg is a magical place nestled in the heart of the Black Forest.  Lots of castles around to stir the imagination.


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## Miriam Minger (Nov 27, 2010)

J. S. Laurenz said:


> Freiburg, Germany! My husband got a Fulbright Grant to do research there, and I did my own research and wrote my historical romance To Conquer the Heart of a King. Freiburg is a magical place nestled in the heart of the Black Forest. Lots of castles around to stir the imagination.


Yes, I've been to Freiburg as well. Wonderful place and wonderful title for your historical romance. 

Keep those stories of inspiration coming, authors, and readers--join in if you'd like and mix things up a bit with us.

Miriam Minger


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## William Meikle (Apr 19, 2010)

I'm currently working on a CARNACKI novel to complement the HEAVEN AND HELL collection.

As I've said before, I write to escape.

Starting writing, twenty years ago now, was like switching on an engine, one that has been running steadily ever since.

And most of the time, the things that engine chooses to give me to write are very pulpy. I'd love to have a chance to write a Tarzan, John Carter, Allan Quartermain, Mike Hammer or Conan novel, whereas a lot of writers I know would sniff and turn their noses up at the very thought of it.

Most of the aforesaid characters are trademarked and off-bounds for writers without paying licensing fees. 

Carnacki however is fair game.

Nowadays there is a plethora of detectives in both book and film who may seem to use the trappings of crime solvers, but get involved in the supernatural. William Hjortsberg's Falling Angel (the book that led to the movie Angel Heart) is a fine example, an expert blending of gumshoe and deviltry that is one of my favorite books. Likewise, in the movies, we have cops facing a demon in Denzel Washington's Fallen that plays like a police procedural taken to a very dark place.

My interest goes further back to the "gentleman detective" era where we have seekers of truth in Blackwood's John Silence Sherlock Holmes... and William Hope Hodgson's Carnacki.

Carnacki resonated with me immediately on my first reading many years ago. Several of the stories have a Lovecraftian viewpoint, with cosmic entities that have no regard for the doings of mankind. The background Hodgson proposes fits with some of my own viewpoint on the ways the Universe might function, and the slightly formal Edwardian language seems to be a "voice" I fall into naturally.

The eight tales in HEAVEN AND HELL see Carnacki pitted against a variety of foes. and sees me working out more aspects of the cosmology. 

There will be more to come in CARNACKI: THE DARK ISLAND which is underway, and the most fun I've had with my trousers on.

I write to escape. 

I haven't managed it yet, but I'm working on it.


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## Guest (Mar 1, 2011)

For me it was the history of crime in America (I'm a Mark Twain scholar), plus a complete allergy to political correctness.


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## Daisy Dexter Dobbs (Mar 1, 2011)

*I had great inspiration, indeed! *

My newest book, Oil Slick (Greeks Baring Gifts) is book 3 in the Greeks Baring Gifts series (and, yes, it's BARING instead of "bearing" on purpose - LOL). When I created Nick, the hero of Polly's Perilous Pleasures (book 1), I had a definite real-life inspiration in mind. For clarification, I'm going to share a bit about my background before I get to that.

Both sets of my grandparents were from the old country. My father's side of the family is Irish, English and Polish, while my mother's side of the family is Greek. On those occasions when the European and Mediterranean sides of the family got together it was an odd mix, to say the least. There were the exacting Greek Orthodox and the strict Irish Catholics.

Of course, each side believed the other side was going to hell and fought to save me and my siblings from that fate. Unable to deal with the constant tug-of-war, my parents raised us kids as Lutherans, which, to my grandparents' horror, meant eternal damnation for sure. We kids got stuck attending not only Protestant services, but the other churches with our grandparents as well.

I remember going to a number of huge Greek functions as a kid with my yiayia (grandmother) and papou (grandfather). Being pale, blue eyed and fair-haired, I stuck out like a sore thumb, but I got lots of attention and had great fun doing all the Greek dances and eating my fill of baklava (phyllo nut pastry), galactobouriko (custard squares in phyllo), and Jordan almonds.

When I was about twelve I met Adonis at one of those functions and my heart stopped. Actually, his name was Nick, short for Nikolas, and he was in college. To my extreme delight, I learned that his family lived in the same big apartment building as my yiayia and papou. I was in seventh heaven and positively lived for the occasional glimpse of Nick.

He and his family had come over from Greece a few years before, so they still had substantial accents. I could listen to those rich, deep, rolling syllables of his all day long. I used to daydream about Nick, imagining that one day he'd discover me as a woman and put his life on hold to marry me when I got old enough.

I was heartbroken when my grandparents moved from that building a couple of years later. I never saw Nick again. But I never forgot him. When I wrote the first book in this series, using my youthful crush as the inspiration for the hero, all those wonderful memories came flooding back.

As for the other Greek-related references in each of the three books, while I haven't yet been to Greece myself (we hope to go in the next few years), I knew plenty about the country, its people, foods and customs because of my family, and the occasional trips my grandparents made back to Greece. What I didn't know, I researched.

In book 1 I made Polly a caterer because I'm a such a foodie. I'm also a gourmet cook with the innate ability to closely replicate a dish in my own kitchen after eating it in a restaurant or at someone else's house. Trust me when I tell you that this particular skill is NOT a good thing for a woman with a weight problem. There was a time when I was younger that I gave serious consideration to either becoming a caterer or opening up a restaurant. Polly and I also share an abiding love for chocolate and seem to be forever dieting.

After Polly's Perilous Pleasures had been out for a few weeks I started to get lots of email asking me when George's story would be written. After George's story (Accidental Foursome, book 2) was released (Along with Helen, the book's heroine, Polly plays a pivotal role in the book), readers still wanted more. I was elated because I love writing the sexy, funny books in the Greeks Baring Gifts series. Oil Slick (Greeks Baring Gifts) is Alexandros' story. He's the oldest of the Kokoris brothers. In this 3rd book of the series, Polly causes great mischief for the hero and heroine.

Fortunately, I gave twins Nick and George six other brothers, just in case this series became a reader favorite. It did and I'm thrilled! Now that I've told Alexandros' story, I plan to revisit the hunky Kokoris men and write a story for each of the other brothers.

_[Sorry, no links to your books in the body of the post outside the Book Bazaar, it consitutes self promotion. --Betsy]_


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## Miriam Minger (Nov 27, 2010)

williammeikle said:


> I was dealing with a retelling of the Bonnie Prince Charlie story, where romantic myths have subsumed the harsh reality of a coup gone badly wrong. I needed to strip all the romance out of the Highlanders and build them up from the bottom. Making them a shambling army of vamps and mindless drones seemed an obvious place to start. The Watchers series is a swashbuckler, but there is little lace and finery. What I do have is blood and thunder, death and glory in big scale battles and small scale heartbreak. I love it.


So cool, Willie. I also was inspired by Bonnie Prince Charlie's coup gone wrong in my historical/adventure romance, A Hint of Rapture. I'd learned that one of my long-ago relatives (on my Scots-Irish grandfather's side) was Flora MacDonald, who helped the prince escape capture after the Battle of Culloden by dressing him in a maid's garb. I was intrigued by the aftermath of that ill-fated uprising and the devastation suffered by the Highlanders--and how the unlikely love between a hot-headed Scotswoman and a British officer might bring some measure of reconciliation after so much strife and bloodshed.

Miriam Minger

_[Sorry, no links to your books in the body of the post outside the Book Bazaar, it consitutes self promotion. --Betsy]_


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## Debra Burroughs (Feb 17, 2011)

My book, CHICANA, is based on stories my mother and grandmother told me as I was growing up about their lives, escaping the deadly Spanish Flu that had ravaged their village and killed several of their family members.  The story is about their lives in the U.S. as mirgrant farm workers, the poverty and abuse, and how they overcame extreme circumstances and escaped their incredibly difficult lives to find success, love, and triumph over their dire circumstances.


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## JFHilborne (Jan 22, 2011)

Mine came from a combination of things: experience as an ex-pat and the struggle to adjust to a new country, divorce, unsavory characters from my past to name a few.


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## Adria Townsend (Feb 24, 2011)

Thanks, Miriam! I'm glad you like the title!
When were you in Freiburg?  We really miss it and that great transportation system.  Almost every weekend we ventured into the Black Forest on the train and were able to walk to castles like in Staufen and Badenweiler.  The ruins of the fortress in Staufen and the way it perches above the town on a hill laced with trained grape vines was the inspiration for the fortress in To Conquer the Heart of a King.  
Best, 
J. S.


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## Mike Dennis (Apr 26, 2010)

Thanks for posting this thread, Miriam. It's a good one.

My inspiration for _The Take _was two-pronged, pretty unusual, actually, and I discussed it in great depth on Patti Abbott's website. Here's a link to that page:
http://pattinase.blogspot.com/2011/02/how-i-came-to-write-this-book-mike.html.


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## Carol R (Feb 26, 2011)

Aside from my dreams being the inspiration behind my imagery, being a classical pianist means that I always have music playing in my head. My blog http://carolrich-untethered.blogspot.com/ has a list of all the music referenced in my book. I was surprised at the length of the list. Unconscious release?


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## William Meikle (Apr 19, 2010)

The origins of Derek Adams, The Midnight Eye

I read widely, both in the crime and horror genres, but my crime fiction in particular keeps returning to older, pulpier, bases. My series character, Glasgow PI Derek Adams, is a Bogart and Chandler fan, and it is the movies and Americana of the '40s that I find a lot of my inspiration for him, rather than in the modern procedural. 

That, and the old city, are the two main drivers for the Midnight Eye stories.

When I was a lad, back in the early 1960s, we lived in a town 20 miles south of Glasgow, and it was an adventure to the big city when I went with my family on shopping trips. Back then the city was a Victorian giant going slowly to seed. It is often said that the British Empire was built in Glasgow on the banks of the river Clyde. Back when I was young, the shipyards were still going strong, and the city centre itself still held on to some of its past glories. It was a warren of tall sandstone buildings and narrow streets, with Edwardian trams still running through them. The big stores still had pneumatic delivery systems for billing, every man wore a hat, collar and tie, and steam trains ran into grand vaulted railway stations filled with smoke. To a young boy from the sticks it seemed like a grand place. It was only later that I learned about the knife gangs that terrorized the dance halls, and the serial killer, Bible John, who frequented the same dance floors, quoting scripture as he lured teenage girls to a violent end.

Fast forward fifteen years, and I was at University in the city, and getting an education into the real heart of the place. I learned about bars, and religious divides. Glasgow is split along tribal royalties. Back in the Victorian era, shiploads of Irishmen came to Glasgow for work. The protestants went to one side of the city, the catholics to the other. There they set up homes... and football teams. Now these teams are the biggest sporting giants in Scotland, two behemoths that attract bigots like bees to honey. As a student I soon learned how to avoid giving away my religion in bars, and which ones to stay out of on match days.

Also by the time I was a student, a lot of the tall sandstone buildings had been pulled down to make way for tower blocks. Back then they were the new shiny future, taking the people out of the Victorian ghettos and into the present day.

Fast forward to the present day and there are all new ghettos. The tower blocks are ruled by drug gangs and pimps. Meanwhile there have been many attempts to gentrify the city centre, with designer shops being built in old warehouses, with docklands developments building expensive apartments where sailors used to get services from hard faced girls, and with shiny, trendy bars full of glossy expensively dressed bankers.

And underneath it all, the old Glasgow still lies, slumbering, a dreaming god waiting for the stars to be right again.

Derek Adams, The Midnight Eye, knows the ways of the old city. And, if truth be told, he prefers them to the new.

Everybody in Scotland's got stories to tell, and once you get them going, you can't stop them. I love chatting to people, (usually in pubs) and finding out the -weird- shit they've experienced. Derek is mainly based on a bloke I met years ago in a bar in Partick, and quite a few of the characters that turn up and talk too much in my books can be found in real life in bars in Glasgow, Edinburgh and St Andrews.


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## M.S. Verish (Feb 26, 2010)

The inspiration behind _Raven's Heart: A Tale from the World of Secramore _ came from a long distance relationship. Stef was away at college while I (Matt) worked. We decided to keep in touch via "email round-robin story writing." Stef wrote a page of fantasy off the top of her head, and I continued it. It was garbage the first try, but we tried again, liked it, and called it _Raven's Heart_ We eventually self-published it...after twenty million revisions, of course.


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## Miriam Minger (Nov 27, 2010)

J. S. Laurenz said:


> When were you in Freiburg? We really miss it and that great transportation system. Almost every weekend we ventured into the Black Forest on the train and were able to walk to castles like in Staufen and Badenweiler. The ruins of the fortress in Staufen and the way it perches above the town on a hill laced with trained grape vines was the inspiration for the fortress in To Conquer the Heart of a King.
> Best,
> J. S.


Several honeymoons ago.  I said I was a romantic.

Keep those tales of inspiration coming. Inspiration has always intrigued me. Did it come in a flash? Take months or years to develop? Share your "lightbulb" moments with us.

Miriam Minger


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## marshacanham (Jul 30, 2010)

Interesting thread, since people always ask:  where do you get your ideas.

The Wind and the Sea came in a flash, from reading a passage in a magazine about something something something and the wind and the sea and something something. Saw the whole book in my head...ships, battles at sea, canvas sails, cannon....

Through A Dark Mist came from a recurring dream I'd had since childhood.  An editor told me to write it down and it became the prologue for what then became my medieval trilogy.

The Pride of Lions came from my Scottish neighbour, who liked to tipple a few and sing rowdy songs afterward.  She used to belt out "I'll take the high road and you take the low road", then in a sober moment told me the origin of the song and once again, the whole idea for the story came to me...as well as the sequel and the spinoff...making it my Highland Trilogy.

The idea for Pale Moon Rider came from a few lines in the poem, the Highwayman.

Bound by the Heart, Across A Moonlit Sea, and The Iron Rose came from a lifelong crush on Errol Flynn *s*


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## Guest (Mar 3, 2011)

Life...


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## Christine Kersey (Feb 13, 2011)

For No Way Out, I thought: What would happen if a woman was making the bed and lifted the mattress and found thousands in cash stashed there. And then her husband disappears.


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## Miriam Minger (Nov 27, 2010)

marshacanham said:


> Interesting thread, since people always ask: where do you get your ideas.
> 
> Bound by the Heart, Across A Moonlit Sea, and The Iron Rose came from a lifelong crush on Errol Flynn *s*


Love that about Errol. 

I modeled the Viking hero in Twin Passions, my very first historical romance, on one of my longtime crushes, Rutger Hauer.

Miriam Minger


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## Miriam Minger (Nov 27, 2010)

sibelhodge said:


> I wrote Fourteen Days Later because I think we've all been in the situation where our lives are stuck in a rut or we're down after the break up of a relationship. I was inspired by the idea that anything is possible if you take a chance on something new. You really never know what's around the corner.


Love that sentiment, Sibel. I think all indie authors and/or those re-publishing their backlist, can attest to the wonder of not knowing what's around the corner and taking a chance on something new--ebooks!

Miriam Minger

Any more stories of inspiration out there to share?


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## Donna Ball (May 8, 2010)

Miriam, first I have to say I love the look and consistency of your covers. Not only are they striking on their own but they make a beautiful collection. Great branding!

The inspiration for my latest Kindle publication, Night Flight came from something that actually happened to a friend of my daughter's years (many years!) ago, when he answered a ringing pay phone and received a message that wasn't meant for him.

Now that I think about it, most of my books were inspired by a real life event (and I thought I was so imaginative!), but there are too many of them-- books and events-- to list here. Great question, though; it made me think!

_[Sorry, no links to your books in the body of the post outside the Book Bazaar, it consitutes self promotion. --Betsy]_


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## RobertLCollins (Feb 1, 2011)

How's this:

*Expert Assistance* was inspired by *Doctor Who* revolution stories, *Casablanca*, and wry observations about pop music. Oh, and the *Hitch-Hiker's Guide* books.


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## Edward W. Robertson (May 18, 2010)

For The White Tree, I wanted to tell a Darth Vader story that didn't suck. You know, exploring how an average young guy ends up bad--in this case, a zombie-slinging necromancer.

So I started when he was young. When he first began to pursue the path that would eventually turn him all Dark Side. As the first book in a trilogy, I tried not to go _too_ dark with it, but still spent a lot of time on the compromises, ambition, and confusion that would lay the groundwork for his eventual descent.

Problem is, I ended up really, really liking him--seeing him slowly turn evil over the next two books is probably going to bust me up.

_[Sorry, no links to your books in the body of the post outside the Book Bazaar, it consitutes self promotion. --Betsy]_


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## Michelle Muto (Feb 1, 2011)

If there is a book that you want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, you must be the one to write it. ~ Toni Morrison

That's pretty much the reason I wrote The Book of Lost Souls. I wanted a YA UF that wasn't all doom and gloom. While I enjoy dark stories, I had a hard time finding UF that was a little more lighthearted - like the earlier Harry Potter novels.


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## isaacsweeney (Jan 1, 2011)

Since the stories in Against Her Fading Hour are all from women's points of view, I think I was trying to empathize and sympathize with some important people in my life who are women. The stories, though fiction, are all born out of real-life situations that caused stress in some way. They were therapeutic for me (and maybe they will be for readers too!).


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## Miriam Minger (Nov 27, 2010)

Donna Ball said:


> Miriam, first I have to say I love the look and consistency of your covers. Not only are they striking on their own but they make a beautiful collection. Great branding!


Thanks, Donna, and it was great to read what inspired you. All of our stories come from somewhere, real life events or otherwise. It's that bright, burning kernel when it all begins that so fascinates me.

My contemporary child abduction thriller, Blood Son (written as M.C. Walker), did not start out as an inspirational novel--but it grew nonetheless from a single familiar Bible verse about Rachel weeping for her children and that she would not be consoled because they were no more. The depth of that grief really struck me, made me think about the horror and pain of losing a child, and about the ferocity of a mother willing to do anything to help her child. Anything.

Chilling stuff.

Miriam Minger/M.C. Walker

_[Sorry, no links to your books in the body of the post outside the Book Bazaar, it consitutes self promotion. --Betsy]_


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## thejosh86 (Mar 1, 2011)

My book stems from both my impeccable sense of humor and my undeniable love of geeky stuff like super heroes, zombies, science fiction, shear ridiculousness, and that list goes on and on and on. I actually created the character and his zany little universe back in 2005 when I was taking a screen writing course in college. The class really latched on to these short little five page scripts I wrote about an inept super hero and his arch nemesis. So, I figured I better run with it--and I did.


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## pixichick (Mar 1, 2011)

For my novel Black Diamond Death, I wanted a strong female character in a great setting - and that's how I created Sloane Monroe.  I then placed her in Park City, UT, which is a beautiful location and unique compared to what I usually read in books.  And then I let her take over - she's been pretty busy catching all those killers out there


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## catjournalist (Nov 22, 2010)

:This is a great topic. Thank you.

I once rescued a calico cat in Nevada. I called her by an affectionate Yiddish name, Ketzela. My friend in Vegas who adopted her, calls her Miss Kitty. I had two things going for me in writing my small book: I grew up in an Orthodox Jewish home, and I love kitties. So the concept of how a cat would behave in a religious household is not too far-fetched.  

In my book of rhyming essays, "Mewsings of a Jewish cat," Ketzela goes on about not getting enough food at Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement; or chases after spinning tops--and potato latkes--during Hanukkah, and mostly, makes sure the gefilte fish meets her standards what with the advent of Passover. Ketzel's  my alter ego, so I had a lot of fun with this. Especially recording the audio CD. 

Greta


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## G.Hugh (Sep 24, 2009)

I was contracted by the United Nations in 2000 to design and oversee changes in how they moved money and information around the globe. The contract was for six years.

During the six years of the contract a scandal erupted at the UN surrounding the Oil for Food Program. This was a UN administered effort that permitted the embargoed Hussein run Iraq, isolated after the invasion of Kuwait and the first Iraq war, to sell Oil to the world. The funds were to be used to buy food and medical supplies to provide the Iraqi people with the necessities of life, thereby reducing the impact on them of the embargo.

October 27, 2005, a committee headed by Paul Volker issued a report of the audit conducted into the corruption in the program. It was almost 700 pages but the real meat for me was in two sentences. "&#8230;the Government of Iraq sold $64.2 billion of oil to 248 companies. In turn, 3,614 companies sold $34.5 billion of humanitarian goods to Iraq."

*The difference between the income from oil sales and the outgo to buy humanitarian goods was 29.7 Billion Dollars. I was deeply involved in the movement of money by the UN and I couldn't stop asking the question, "What happened to that $29,700,000,000?"*

Sometime in the late fall of 2005 I was leaving my apartment building for work by way of the rear entrance through a small park on 45th Street. I was stopped by security personnel because a man had jumped out of the twentieth story of one of the buildings that like mine, bordered the park. When I looked out through the door I saw the body splattered in the park (20 stories is a long drop). However, more disturbing was the fact that on his way down a golden silk robe had been torn from his body and was caught in the branches of the forty-foot high trees that were all over the little park. As I walked to the front entrance of the building I kept thinking to myself "Who the hell puts on a silk robe to jump out a window, I don't think it was a suicide"

Over the twenty-five years that I was in the consulting business I traveled about 50% of the time and read an untold number of mysteries.

From that day in the fall of 2005, I knew that there was a great mystery in connecting those last two events, 29.7 billion bucks gone missing and a guy dropped out of his twentieth story apartment window.

The contract with the UN ended September 30, 2006 and on November 6, 2006, I decided to reinvent myself as a mystery writer and connect those two events with the workings of my imagination.

The first mystery evolved into a sequel and now I am working on number three.

I have never looked back.

G. Hugh Bodell

_[Sorry, no links to your books in the body of the post outside the Book Bazaar, it consitutes self promotion. --Betsy]_


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## Miriam Minger (Nov 27, 2010)

Shock us.  Move us.  Enlighten us.

What's the inspiration beyond YOUR book?

Miriam Minger


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## J.R.Mooneyham (Mar 14, 2011)

Of the seven books I currently have available, fully five were inspired by real people and events from my high school and college years, growing up in one wild Tennessee county. Shoot outs, fast cars, and gangs of outlaws were the rule, rather than the exception. It often felt like I was living in the Old West-- only with the horses being replaced by cars.

The other two books are science fiction, and were done largely for two reasons: one, I believe all the really interesting stuff is going to happen long after our own generation has passed on; but I want to cheat death, and know as much as I can about all that anyway, in the here and now; so I did the research, and wrote a story based on my findings. Two, I've always loved 'hard' science fiction, and aspired to write my own. So I did.

To make my sci fi as accessible as possible to people who grew up in the 20th or early 21st centuries, the main character is a 20th century native, abducted for complex reasons by accidental time travelers, who thereby gets a tour of sorts of various milestones in future history (and so a good idea of what people and technology may be like over the next thousand years).


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## G.Hugh (Sep 24, 2009)

This was a great idea Miriam. I enjoy each new contribution, it is truly interesting to read the diverse motivation that brings each of us to writing. If the motivation is compelling and the author passionate about that motivation I find when I go to the book it too expresses that passion.

This thread will be a source for my reading material as long as the contributions continue.

Thanks again Miriam for kicking it off and continuing to promote it

Now I would like to add to this thread a book that the motivation for which was...*ME* and the author is My Wife.

We speak jointly on the book in many venues from spas and resorts to rehabilitation centers and schools.

~~~~​
FOREWORD
For the past twenty-seven years, I've had the pleasure of sharing my life with an amazingly positive and resilient man named Jerry. Jerry's life story is one with a message of hope, inner strength, determination and perseverance. At the young age of twenty-six, Jerry realized that he was an alcoholic. Unfortunately, forty-three years ago, the knowledge and sophistication of dealing with alcoholism by the medical profession, was not what we know it to be today. The repetitive event of landing in an alcoholism treatment center or psychiatric ward, of a state operated hospital, was played out many times while Jerry sought to end the drinking and the devastation it brought into his life. The outrageous circumstances that ensued, brought about by a brilliant mind saturated with alcohol, included pan handling in front of the Bank of New York in downtown Manhattan.

I wouldn't be writing this book if Jerry's saga had ended badly, but I feel compelled to bring his story and his life's philosophy to these pages.

Jerry stopped drinking thirty-five years ago, and is now living the life he was put on earth to live. In the course of his career, he held many impressive jobs in the world of banking, accounting and finance and built a technology consulting company that landed him lengthy consulting assignments in, among many other prestigious organizations, the United Nations. In 2002, in the U.K. Room of the United Nations building on First Avenue in Manhattan, Jerry addressed hundreds of people and spoke of the technological advances that he was implementing for their organization. As he stepped down from the podium, he asked himself "how the hell did I get here?" The answer to that question was simply "one baby step at a time".

This book is not about one man finding sobriety or about the challenges of alcoholism. Its' purpose lies in identifying the tools, tricks and positive techniques utilized by Jerry and other positive thinkers like him to assist you, the reader, in your quest for happiness, purpose and fulfillment.

I have encountered many positive souls throughout my life, like my husband, who have inspired me, encouraged me and motivated me to be all that I can be. My hope is to share the lessons that I have taken from my role models and pass along their message of hope and strength to you.

Regards
G. Hugh Bodell
Author

_[Sorry, no links in the body of the post outside the Book Bazaar, it consitutes self promotion. --Betsy]_


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## parKb5 (Jan 4, 2011)

The inspiration behind my book was the fact that vampire books are so popular now a days when vampires themselves are pretty ridiculous. I mean, they can't go out in the sun (I mean seriously, daylight can kill them?), they have to drink blood (imagine having to eat the SAME thing every day) and crosses, really, what if the person who became a vampire was Jewish? All the myths seem kind of dumb. So I thought if there were really vampires, what would they be like? Why would they be in hiding? How did they come to be? It kind of wrote itself from there.


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## xandy3 (Jun 13, 2010)

In 1988 I had the idea for a teen mystery, involving two orphaned sisters. I'd since abandoned that idea. (thank heaven!)

A decade later, I found myself in a bad marriage. I found a girl's phone number in the pocket of my (now ex)husband's jeans. While he was out "working," of course, I was home sick with strep throat and a high fever. I woke up in the middle of the night to get a drink of water, and was a little delirious from fever. Looking at myself in the bathroom mirror, I looked as if I had Faerie wings...

The next morning, I started writing a series of short stories about a family of faerie sisters...
And, had submitted two stories to a fantasy ezine doing an episode dedicated to "bad faeries." One story was based on the teen mystery idea I had years ago, and the other ...well became the first chapter of _Wishful Thinking. _

For my short story, _Black Widow_...
I was inspired in part by a picture in a fashion & beauty magazine, and by finding an actual black widow spider crawling around the building at work. I scooped her up in a napkin, and took her outside and set her free because I didn't want to see her get squished by somebody...
She was too cool to suffer that fate 

_Carousel _was inspired by a JC Penney's ad on TV that freaked me out. It featured a carousel with little girls in pretty spring dresses, riding the painted ponies...and one creepy, little old man with a striped coat and straw hat. My ex (who I was still married to at the time) kept calling the old guy "Lester the molester." 
That night, while he was at work, I wrote the first draft of _Carousel of Nightmares_, which it was dubbed at the time.


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## Craig (Oct 30, 2010)

My inspiration has always been the human condition as revealed in Scripture.

_[Sorry, no links in the body of the post outside the Book Bazaar, it consitutes self promotion. --Betsy]_


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## Michael Scott Miller (Sep 2, 2010)

So where did I get the inspiration to write a book about an unlikely bunch of guys who come together to form a band with the hope of pulling themselves out of their troubled existence?

The first spark of an idea for _Ladies and Gentlemen&#8230;The Redeemers _ came to me about ten years ago when I was riding the train into center city Philadelphia for my job at the Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily News. I took the train only infrequently, but whenever I did, and walked through Suburban Station, I would routinely see singers or musicians performing in the corridors there. My mind first wandered to wondering what would happen if someone gathered together these seemingly destitute folks and molded them into a musical act. Could they come together with a music industry promoter and be turned into a successful band?

This thought stayed with me trip after trip, until it finally struck me that while I might not have the necessary skill set to form and promote a musical act, the idea might make for an interesting tale.

Initially, I thought the name of the book and the band would be the Subway Surfers, comprised solely of musicians recruited from the subway corridors. However, as I developed the story line, it became apparent that the story would work more effectively if the characters had a greater diversity of backgrounds and baggage, which ultimately led to the concept of the Redeemers.

Thanks for letting me share!


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## Iain Rowan (Mar 5, 2011)

Because my book's a collection of short stories, there's a collection of inspirations behind it.

The opening story, _One Step Closer_, came from a day I was standing in a queue in the bank, when a man came barreling in through the door, one hand deep inside his jacket. He stood just inside for a moment or two, looking around, eyes wild, and everyone stopped breathing. Then he went out again, and we all started breathing again. I wondered what I would have done had he done what we were half-expecting him to do, and pull out a gun. And out of that wondering came the first story (it's the one that's available in the sample).

A couple of the stories were inspired by researching real-life con-artists, and some of their classic scams. Another came from memories of being a kid, growing up in the country. Down the lane from us, in the middle of nowhere, was a house: two fierce Dobermanns in the garden, CCTV mounted on the roof, and surrounded by rumours that the man who lived there was connected to the Great Train Robbery. The story _A Walk In The Park_ is about a book-keeper for a criminal gang who ends up taking a hired killer to just such a house, with not very happy consequences. For _Easy Job_, the character came first, a seasoned burglar tackling an easy job at a lonely house, and how it might turn out to be not so easy after all. Same for The Remains Of My Estate, where the starting point was the character, and the situation he finds himself in as the story opens.

And some (like _Moths_), or The Chain (which is about a mundane spot of blackmail that turns out to be anything but ordinary) just come, and I couldn't begin to explain where from. Probably best not to think too hard about it...


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## Shelia A. Huggins (Jan 20, 2011)

October Fire is a soon-to-be released short story that had me almost screaming out aloud when it came to me in a dream last night.


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## GayleC (Feb 16, 2011)

What a fun topic! I love to read about other people's inspirations.

My mystery began with a piece of flash fiction I wrote at a conference (and won the contest). It was a tongue-in-cheek noir blip about a hard-boiled P.I. being hired to find an ice cube tray in a sleazy character's freezer. When I started thinking about writing a mystery, I thought back to that 250-word piece and said, "Hmm, what else could one find in a freezer?" Lucky me, a severed hand came to mind. I combined that with a character my girlfriend and I created - Peri Menopause, Private Eye. She solves every case by crying, eating chocolate, and b*tch-slapping people until they confess. The two ideas became FREEZER BURN, a novel I still love.

WHAT WOULD ERMA DO? CONFESSIONS OF A FIRST-TIME HUMOR COLUMNIST, my humor book, is the outcome of being a newspaper humor columnist and having enough readers say, "When are you going to put your columns into a book?" I didn't want to slap them willy-nilly, so I wrote a memoir about how I got the newspaper gig, woven around some of the readers' favorite columns. I got the title by constantly asking myself, "What would Erma Bombeck do?"


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## Miriam Minger (Nov 27, 2010)

Really cool stories of inspiration, thanks everyone!

Anyone else want to share?  Open a vein and tell us the "inside" scoop about your book.

Miriam Minger


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## EGranfors (Mar 18, 2011)

I had two inspirations:  the first was the way our counselor treated us in high school, thinking everybody should go to junior college, not bother with four-year universities.  I went to UCLA and loved it and I hope he remembers that forever.

Second, I watched lots of immigrant kids struggle in high school, with English, with friendships, with bulllying.  As a teacher, I did what I could to vest these kids from 30 or more different countries into our world.


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## William Meikle (Apr 19, 2010)

GENERATIONS










Big beasties fascinate me.

Some of that fascination stems from early film viewing. I remember being taken to the cinema to see The Blob. I couldn't have been more than seven or eight, and it scared the crap out of me. The original incarnation of Kong has been with me since around the same time. Similarly, I remember the BBC showing re-runs of classic creature features late on Friday nights, and THEM! in particular left a mark on my psyche. I've also got a Biological Sciences degree, and even while watching said movies, I'm usually trying to figure out how the creature would actually work in nature -- what would it eat? How would it procreate? What effect would it have on the environment around it?

On top of that, I have an interest in cryptozoology, of creatures that live just out of sight of humankind, and of the myriad possibilities that nature, and man's dabbling with it, can throw up.

I also have an interest in science from my own University days, and have always enjoyed over the top scientists in books and movies, from Quatermass to Dr. Frankenstein, from Herbert West to Brundlefly.

All those things were going round in my head when I first sat down to write the novella Generations. It was originally going to be an adult novel, but young Tom just wouldn't keep quiet, and once he met Kate, the kids took over, and once the Giant Ants appeared I was off and away into my own B-movie heaven.


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## RM Prioleau (Mar 18, 2011)

My inspiration have been those old, gothic horror stories like Dracula and Frankenstein. Because gothic fantasy is a new genre for me to write in, I had to get in the right mood to write something so dark and foreboding. I definitely enjoyed doing it!


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## Miriam Minger (Nov 27, 2010)

Any more tales of inspiration to be told?  Did your story idea percolate over time--or come to you in a flash?  Enlighten us!  

Miriam Minger


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## cidneyswanson (Feb 1, 2011)

My inspirations have come as very visual images that make me curious.  A girl who disappears while staring intently at a stream; a girl who lives on a dry, red planet pilots a ship for Earth; a ballet dancer in the act of cutting her hair short.  Why are these young women doing these things? I'd ask myself.  If I still needed to know a few days/weeks down the road, I start writing.


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## Ben Dobson (Mar 27, 2011)

I usually get hit with the idea for a single character or concept and then sit down and make up everything else around that.

The book I'm writing right now is a fantasy about a misanthropic historian.  The entire basis for it was that I had noticed the common trend in the genre that no matter who the hero is or where they began, by the end they can hold their own in a fight, or are an expert assassin, or have some other amazing skill.  I had the idea to write a character who never really undergoes that metamorphosis; from start to finish he's just a bookish dude who's scared to death of violence.  Once I had that, I just sat down and started making up a world and a story around it.

Not groundbreaking stuff, but there it is.


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## Miriam Minger (Nov 27, 2010)

cidneyswanson said:


> My inspirations have come as very visual images that make me curious. A girl who disappears while staring intently at a stream; a girl who lives on a dry, red planet pilots a ship for Earth; a ballet dancer in the act of cutting her hair short. Why are these young women doing these things? I'd ask myself. If I still needed to know a few days/weeks down the road, I start writing.


Very intriguing. Yes, if the idea sticks, then it's worthy of a story. My first historical/adventure romance TWIN PASSIONS waited five years to come out into the light and find its way onto paper in 1987, and my writing career was born.

Tell us your story of inspiration. Dare you. 

Miriam Minger


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## stephaniejenkins (Mar 31, 2011)

I got my inspiration for LURE from listening to an Incubus song, "Anna Molly". I knew I wanted to write a paranormal novel and once I listened to that song, I realized that I wanted to write about sirens.


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## Miriam Minger (Nov 27, 2010)

sjenkins said:


> I got my inspiration for LURE from listening to an Incubus song, "Anna Molly". I knew I wanted to write a paranormal novel and once I listened to that song, I realized that I wanted to write about sirens.


Very cool. Inspiration from a song is amazing, isn't it? I mentioned in an earlier post that the Jimi Hendrix song Voodoo Chile inspired my historical/adventure romance WILD ANGEL, set in medieval Ireland. Go figure. 

Anyone else find inspiration in a song?

Miriam Minger


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## Chris Northern (Jan 20, 2011)

Well, the reason I'm covering the subjects that are the inspiration for my books in several books is that there is so much of it. There are known problems from numerous historical precedents that lead to massive unpleasantness. I think that, as a species, we would be better served to address these problems.

Sound dull? It's a fantasy series, plenty of magic (some say too much but I try and keep it to a minimum); some of battles, daring-do and swordplay (a term which Sapphire thinks is hillarious... sword-play, ha!) even a few monsters here and there (but no Dwarfs, Elves, or anything cute).

Sumto is a Noble (a patron with a small p) by birth because I wanted him to get involved in politics (later) and the way his nation state is governed, partly so that I can explore - and with any luck get readers to think more about - the nature of government. What is it? What is it's legitimate purpose? How do you keep it in check, etc. etc.

But it is a fantasy (to take the edge of the heavy subjects) so magical assassins (and Sapphire, who is quite lethal enough without any magic), and so on. Heroic plots (though Sumto isn't much of a hero - he'd make a better scholar but life has not deal him that choice, yet - and by the time it does it will be too late). The developing nature of Sumto (initially a drunken, gambling, bookish, wastrel was the other part of the inspiration. But secondary.

Inspiration: Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy, it's googleable. The fact that the Roman empire did not fall primarily because of Barbarian incursion but because of generations of incompetent economic policies slavishly followed by a succession of mediocre emperors. Other things to do with politics and economics. I try and keep it in the background while I put Sumto through the meat grinder and make him into the man he will need to be for the end of the series to make sense.

So, as inspiration goes, pretty dull stuff I'm afraid, but there are some laughs along the way. And a few tears, maybe. Possibly a little joy, if I feel Sumto has deserved any.


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## JustDucky83 (Mar 20, 2011)

I really like this question.... My book series is paranormal/romance. My main character in the series Eve is a girl full of crazy thoughts. She is inspired by my thoughts about life,death,love,hate etc. And a plethora of other things that I have seen or heard about. It is all relatable in different ways, and then there is the element of my imagination. Wingless was created because I was having a hard time dealing with death, its a hard pill to swallow. So I created a character who faces death head on. No matter the scrapes and bruises life throws at anyone, you can always get back up. Life is not pretty and sweet, it is never easy. And even with all the ugly... life is still worth living.

And for my other book Heart of Gypsies it was inspired by hatred, I sat and thought about relationships of siblings. And wondered how would it feel to hate your sister so much that you stole her child away from her? And if that wasn't bad enough you took that kid on a decade long road trip full of crime to survive. I imagined it would be quite hard growing up that way, and I wanted to show that even when someone has a horrible life they still can make it.


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## Katie Salidas (Mar 21, 2010)

I’ve always been a fan of vampires and have read as many books about them as I could. When it came time for me to write my own, I wanted to try and take a slightly different approach. Most books gloss over the actual transition from human to vampire, but I wanted to really focus on that change. I wanted to try and depict the actual hardship involved in the transition.

How could a regular person, who for all intents and purposes is “good," be able to kill another human being for sustenance? Would hunger alone do it? Many might just starve themselves at the idea. From there I had to ask what might motivate a person to finally make that kill? What would the bloodlust be like and how would that kill ultimately affect my main character?

For every question that came up, I found an answer and the scenes began to play out. Over time, Immortalis took shape and with it, the reader gets to experience Alyssa’s journey through the transition to this frightening new world, first hand.


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## Guest (Apr 16, 2011)

I wanted to try a hostage thriller and I thought Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen might make a fascinating character. His book "Idea Man" comes out Tuesday. Trying my best to get the re-released Kindle edition of "Billionaires, Bullets, Exploding Monkeys" (Allen is the basis for Jeff Pepper) to somehow latch onto the press for his biography and take off. BBEM is a really fun thriller that folks seem to enjoy quite a bit.. I think the new cover is a vast improvement. Hope you check it out.


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## stephaniejenkins (Mar 31, 2011)

Miriam Minger said:


> Very cool. Inspiration from a song is amazing, isn't it? I mentioned in an earlier post that the Jimi Hendrix song Voodoo Chile inspired my historical/adventure romance WILD ANGEL, set in medieval Ireland. Go figure.
> 
> Anyone else find inspiration in a song?
> 
> Miriam Minger


Listening to Jimi Hendrix always gives me chills. His music is so amazing!


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## Guest (Apr 16, 2011)

Life...


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## Ali Cooper (May 1, 2010)

Cave? Five years of caving .


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## Patty Jansen (Apr 5, 2011)

Life in space is seen as the domain of serious, well-trained adults. However, if we are to put colonies in space, there will inevitably be children in space stations. What would life be like for them?


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## Mel Comley (Oct 13, 2010)

I loved James Patterson's early Alex Cross novels and he had one particular nasty villain in two of his books.

This character inspired me to come up with The Unicorn. But now my fav character is my MC, Lorne as she's feisty and a tough cop.


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## xandy3 (Jun 13, 2010)

The inspiration from my children's story _The Golden Rose_ came from a dream I had when I was in college. I was in this fairy tale, and I was supposed to marry this prince...but he left me at the altar. So I ran into the woods, and planted golden and sterling silver roses everywhere.

When I woke up, I put it in my dream journal for Psychology class, which were turned into our professor at the end of the week and counted towards our grade. At the end of class, when he handed back our journals he mentioned to me that I should consider writing children's books, based on my dreams. 

...So I did! And, my sister, who was an art student, did the illustrations.

I recently "resurrected it" and changed the ending.


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## Guest (Apr 18, 2011)

The novel "Billionaires, Bullets, Exploding Monkeys" features a character based on Paul Allen! Readers really seem to enjoy it. Only 99 cents, and a fun companion read to Allen's book "Idea Man" that comes out on Tuesday.


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## HeidiHall (Sep 5, 2010)

I love this thread too and can't believe this is the first time I am seeing it. There are so many thought-provoking answers here, but mine is actually a little... embarrassing.

_An Unexpected Obsession_ was exactly that for me. I became obsessed with a certain, um... actor and could not stop thinking about him. I'm not a kid and he practically is, so it was double trouble for me - and my first experience with having a crush on any celebrity. The story popped into my head as a sort of "what if" scenario and would not let me sleep. In fact, I didn't get a good nights rest until the entire fantasy was out. The weirdest part is that now I'm completely indifferent to said actor. I even cancelled the google alert on his name (pathetic to have done that in the first place, I know ).

My other novels come from different places. In _A dose of Reality_, I came up with the ending and wrote a story to fit. The series I'm currently working on came more from a character that I had to write...she makes me laugh.

I guess I just love telling lies...um, I mean stories.


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## horsewisevt (Apr 2, 2011)

The inspiration for my book, Dancing in Your Bubble, came after many years of working with the top spiritual teachers from Peru.  And this is not to tout my expertise, so much as to qualify the why.  I watched hundreds of students become groupies, and spend literally tens of thousands of dollars to study with these people. WHY?  

So many of these teachings and concepts contain powerful ways of improving peoples lives.  BUT... they are out of the reach of many of those who most need them.  Healing and insight come at different times for different people, and not everyone can afford 5,000.00 for a spiritual retreat. And, many people prefer to take that journey on their own time, as it works into their daily lives. 

All of the books I found on spiritual teachings came under two categories: personal story of transformation, or a specific topic, such as "soul retrieval."  While I respect the people who write them, and appreciate the power of story, those stories are essentially for the benefit of the teller, not the listener.  My background in education taught me one thing very clearly- what is the listener doing?  The information if for the receiver, not the teller.  So I constructed a book about a lot of spiritual teachings and techniques.  But I wrote it as an interactive workbook, with the reader as the central focus.  the point was to create a guide that a reader can use, so that they can grasp concepts, try the activities, draw pictures, make lists, and consider things in ways that change perspective. 

The two short stories I wrote, are also based around the spiritual, shamanic and healing themes.  It is my goal to write a collection of short stories that embody the different aspects of the healing teachings.  Again, with the goal here to convey the sense of what these things are, and how they play out in every day life, for the benefit of the readers understanding.


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## Miriam Minger (Nov 27, 2010)

WriterGurl1 said:


> I love this thread too and can't believe this is the first time I am seeing it. There are so many thought-provoking answers here, but mine is actually a little... embarrassing.
> 
> _An Unexpected Obsession_ was exactly that for me. I became obsessed with a certain, um... actor and could not stop thinking about him. I'm not a kid and he practically is, so it was double trouble for me - and my first experience with having a crush on any celebrity. The story popped into my head as a sort of "what if" scenario and would not let me sleep. In fact, I didn't get a good nights rest until the entire fantasy was out.


But we all have our unexpected obsessions!  I saw the movie Three Musketeers in high school (dating myself here) with Michael York, Richard Chamberlain and Oliver Reed--and I could not stop fantasizing about Oliver Reed for weeks afterward! He was the bad boy of course, all dressed in black. No wonder I began my writing career with historical/adventure romances! 

It's wonderful to read everyone's tales of inspiration, so don't hold back. Share!

Miriam Minger


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## Miriam Minger (Nov 27, 2010)

WriterGurl1 said:


> I love this thread too and can't believe this is the first time I am seeing it. There are so many thought-provoking answers here.


Join in the fun, authors. What inspired YOU to write your latest novel?

Miriam Minger


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## ukdame (Jan 22, 2011)

The inspiration for my book (my first and so far only) came from the genealogy research I did around my Jamaican mother and her family.  For decades she had refused to tell me about her Jamaican family and who my father was.  She was taken ill one day and nearly died and when she recovered I decided to find out for myself about her past, her family and who my father was.  So I did some research, traced some family member and  what I found out filled me with such admiration for her that I decided to write a book so that future generations of my family would know about her and that's how 'Olga - A Daughter's Tale' came about.

Marie


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## Miriam Minger (Nov 27, 2010)

Very cool, Marie.  Visiting my relatives in Norway helped to inspire my two Viking historical romances, TWIN PASSIONS and THE PAGAN'S PRIZE.  I was envisioning dragon ships along every fjord!  

Miriam Minger


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## Courtney Cantrell (Mar 16, 2011)

My novel started out as a dream in which I was standing on a bridge, watching a dark figure at the other end.  The figure opened its mouth, and a huge ring of darkness came out. 

That dream is now a scene about 3/4 of the way through the novel.


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## Miriam Minger (Nov 27, 2010)

Wonderful imagery in your dream and great cover, Courtney!

Miriam Minger


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## Courtney Cantrell (Mar 16, 2011)

Miriam Minger said:


> Wonderful imagery in your dream and great cover, Courtney!
> 
> Miriam Minger


Aw, thank you for those kind words, Miriam! I had cover art design from a great team of artists attached to my indie publisher. Love them!

Concerning the dream, I have a video blog post about how my dreams have inspired all of my novels: I Dream, Therefore I Write -- And Video!


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## Pamela Kay Noble Brown (Mar 3, 2011)

Miriam Minger said:


> Hi fellow authors! I thought it would be fun for readers to know the inspiration behind your novels.


Interesting thread Miriam. My book "Revelations" was inspired mainly through watching the evening news and the Nancy Grace Show. It just stunned me that so often the perpetrator of some of the most unthinkable crimes turned out to be, sadly, a spouse, boyfriend/girlfriend or someone who was close to and supposedly "loved" the victim.

It got to me to thinking and exploring some of these relationships, why they might have turned bad, who can you really trust, can you ever really know your soul mate, etc...

I hope my readers, especially victims of domestic violence, will come away from "Revelations" uplifted and knowing that they are survivors and that we do care.


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## Miriam Minger (Nov 27, 2010)

Courtney Cantrell said:


> Concerning the dream, I have a video blog post about how my dreams have inspired all of my novels: I Dream, Therefore I Write -- And Video!


@Courtney--thanks for sharing about your video blog post.

@Pamela--Best of luck with Revelations, a much-needed message.

Miriam Minger


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## jonathanmoeller (Apr 19, 2011)

For Demonsouled, it was this quote from Arthur Schopenhauer:

_It is a fact, then, that in the heart of every man there lies a beast which only waits for an opportunity to storm and rage, in its desire to inflict pain on others, or, if they stand in his way, to kill them..._

And for Soul of Tyrants (Demonsouled), it was this quote from Euripedes's "Medea":
_
I know indeed what evil I intend to do,
But stronger than all afterthoughts is my fury,
Fury that brings upon mortals the greatest evils._

_[Sorry, no links in the body of the post outside the Book Bazaar, it consitutes self promotion. --Betsy]_


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## Tess St John (Feb 1, 2011)

I was busy writing Romantic Mysteries/Suspense, when I saw a contest for Historical Romance short stories. I love historicals, so I wrote one. After I was done, I knew it didn't have the emotional impact I was hoping for, so I knew it had to be a full length historical. Then, when I began to expand the story, the first scene came to me and I sat at the computer with tears rolling down my cheeks...never having connected with a scene in such a way as I did to the first scene of Second Chances.


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## Doug DePew (Mar 26, 2011)

My book isn't a novel. It's a memoir of my time in the Army. However, the inspiration behind writing it was so important to me that I closed out the epilogue with it. 

One of my former team leaders in the Army friended me on facebook last year. We hadn't had contact since I left Germany in 1988. The very first message he sent me said,"Tell your wife it's all true." 

I called her in to show her! You'd have to read the book to truly understand it, but that's what prompted me to start the book. We had quite an interesting time over there and sometimes it was hard for me to believe it all happened. It seemed like a dream after all these years. Seeing him confirm what I already remembered caused me to start recording it.


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## samanthawarren (May 1, 2011)

My novel, _Blood of the Dragon_, started out with a simple phrase: Chelandra, the dragon queen. NaNo 2010 came around and I simply had to use it. She didn't end up a queen, but it still turned into a great book (yes, I enjoy reading my own book. Is that bad?).


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## Miriam Minger (Nov 27, 2010)

Tess St John said:


> I was busy writing Romantic Mysteries/Suspense, when I saw a contest for Historical Romance short stories. I love historicals, so I wrote one. After I was done, I knew it didn't have the emotional impact I was hoping for, so I knew it had to be a full length historical. Then, when I began to expand the story, the first scene came to me and I sat at the computer with tears rolling down my cheeks...never having connected with a scene in such a way as I did to the first scene of Second Chances.


That kind of connection is always good indicator that you've got a winner on your hands. Thanks for sharing, Tess.

Miriam Minger


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## RobertLCollins (Feb 1, 2011)

Allow me to share a little about the two published short stories I've just put up.

"What to Change" came from me thinking about my past mistakes. Some in the first paragraphs are mine, some aren't. I then wondered if it wasn't better to worry about my future than my past.

"A Stop at Stanford" was inspired my the neat little towns and tourist places I found in Kansas while I was working on a series of travel booklets. The story was going to be non-genre, but I never felt motivated to write it. It wasn't until I made it SF that I wanted to write and finish it.


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## momilp (Jan 11, 2010)

What a cool thread! 
I like to ask myself questions, and spin tales around extreme scenarios.

_The Priest_, and _Pax In The Land Of Women_: what if love between a man and a woman was illegal, and the highest form of perversion?
_Earth and Sun_: what if you could never touch the person you love?
_Green Glass and High Tide_: what if you were never born, but you were built?


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## Edward C. Patterson (Mar 28, 2009)

With many nnovels under the belt, I find that inspiration is a key factor. If the same things inspire, the novels tke on a gray quality, so I find inspiration for a single work in diverse sources. I post one or two a day:

Look Away Silence
I drew my inspiration here from my experiences in AIDS services and the horror of watching 13 of my closest friends secumb to the disease. Principlally, I was moved by one specific couple journeyingthrough this holocaust. I was also inspired by my experiences with a gay men's chorus and a Festival held in Denver. The book is also populated by chaacters from some of my shorter novels. This was a difficult book to wrtie and I drew support from the Kindleboard Author Support discussion group, who helped me get through it. I acknowledge KB in this book.

Edward C. Patterson

_[Sorry, no links in the body of the post outside the Book Bazaar, it consitutes self promotion. --Betsy]_


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## Miriam Minger (Nov 27, 2010)

I feel at times we're peering into an author's soul with these tales of inspiration.  So cool and wonderful of you to share.  

Miriam Minger


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## Edward C. Patterson (Mar 28, 2009)

Next there's my epic novel (the first of five in the series) called

THE JADE OWL

An unusual inspiration here, because unlike my other 28 works (both published and in progress), this one was created on-demand - I had a contract to write a serial novel for anotherchapter.com It was 2002 and I was just downsized from an executive position and was pretty blue. I started to craft in my head a story about a man, out of work, who is stranded in San Francisco and meet up with a young drifter whoshows him how to survive it all. Pretty mundane - but then, as I paced about my kitchen, my eye settled on a small glass object from my grandmother's garden (an object that for some reason was packed in the Christmas ornament box - I set it aside to store it somewhere else). It was green owl. My mind started. I have a master's degree in Chinese History and have traveled there. Suddenly, the stranded man became an out of work Professor of Chinese History and the relic a whacky jade relic that once belonged to the Empress Wu of the T'ang Dynasty. It sparked from there, and one million words later (4 books and still going), The Jade Owl was born and became my flagship work. Funny how these things happen.

Edward C. Patterson

_[Sorry, no links in the body of the post outside the Book Bazaar, it consitutes self promotion. --Betsy]_


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## deanfromaustralia (Mar 24, 2011)

I have long been fascinated by the concept of reincarnation and although I was some what suspicious of it, I have always found it to be an intriguing one. When I began researching for my first novel (see my sig) I applied my medical knowledge to seek out journal articles about transplant recipients who, upon receiving their donor organs actually began to take on the characteristics of their donors.

For example, I read of one account, where a young woman received a heart. She was previously a health conscious, physically active vegetarian. However, one of the first cravings she had post surgery was for a New York style hot dog and a pint of beer. She had never touched alcohol in her life. It turned out that her donor was a big burly truck driver who did in fact drink and enjoy fast food on a regular basis. 

Another inspiration which ended up becoming one of my central characters in the story - my dog Simon - was in the accounts I read of dogs being able to sense the presence or the spirit of their lost masters in individuals who themselves have come close to death. I used this as a critical plot device in my story which I think worked very well.


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## barbara elsborg (Oct 13, 2010)

The inspiration for my story - An Ordinary Girl - was the horrible murders by Fred and Rosemary West. I thought about how a child of theirs would have to deal with the aftermath of what they'd done and wrote about - obviously fictional - a girl called Ash who spends her life trying to bring joy and happiness to others at the expense of her own happiness.


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## philvan (May 26, 2010)

I was inspired to write my Sherlock Holmes + Zombie novella by being tasked with writing a fan-fiction short story in a writing competition. Since i knew zero about Fan-fic, I did a little research & found a whole pile of Sherlock Holmes stuff out there.
Since I've always liked the Great Detective, I duly wrote a short story based on one of the better known stories in the original corpus. That was fun to write, and the instigator of the competition had written a Zombie novel (Adam Sifre, whose 'I've been Deader ' is not yet published, as far as I know), so I decided to revivify the victim in Doyle's original & go from there.
Result was a failed attempt at a 50,000 word novel during Nanowrimo 2010, which I turned into a 13,000 word novella a few weeks ago, and put out on Smashwords and Kindle a few days ago.


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## balaspa (Dec 27, 2009)

Wow, good question, and one that I probably get asked as much as the rest of you authors.  For each book, the inspiration was different.

For my horror novel RIG - it was hearing "The Sounds of Hell" clip from the Art Bell show online one night...late at night...while listening on headphones

For my thriller After the Snowfall:  I was out walking my dog and had a very sudden and clear image of the street filled with snow, so much that no cars could move, and three men in black walking down the middle of the snow-covered road toward me...and I knew they were up to no good.

For Sin-Eater: He started out as me trying to create a comic book character with powers and abilities I had not seen before.  When I struggled to find an artist, I figured a series of books might work better.

For my horro novel GONE: It was a deliberate attempt to create a horror story.  What scares me, I asked.  Being a city boy...camping out in the wildnerness scares the bejeezus out of me...and thus it was born.  Then the story went to so many weird places I have NO clue where they came from.


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## Travis haselton (Jul 24, 2010)

My novellas are something I started so people can have, affordable, quick, and fun to read, that will leave them waiting for the next "episode." Much like a tv show. I have been inspired by my personal life and experiences, but also I am influanced by movies such as "Billy Jack" anything with John Wayne, etc...


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## StefanBourque (May 23, 2011)

There's always some unanswerable question on my mind that gets a story out of me but with my novella, "My Name Is Joe," it was based off something that happened to an acquaintance of mine.  A sweet, quiet man, never a bad word to say about anyone was diagnosed with bladder cancer.  While he was in the hospital for tests and exploratory surgery a nurse came in and at some point said to him, "Bet you thought it would be lung cancer with all the cigarettes you've smoked."  That was all she said--no premable, no existing conversation prior to that little blurb.  Just that and nothing more.  The event angered me certainly.  It broke my heart.  But what it really did was make me wonder what it would take to say such a thing to someone delicately balancing the idea that he might not be alive in a year.  That led to an attempt to understand the world in which we live from the aspect of man who knows he is dying and whether or not is was possible to find grace in a seemingly graceless age.  My acquaintance by the way, I hear, is doing very well and looks like he'll make a full recovery.


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## Miriam Minger (Nov 27, 2010)

Such fascinating and yes, moving, stories of inspiration behind your books.  Thank you.  Let's keep going, okay?  These revelations are at the heart of what writing is all about...

Miriam Minger


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## TWErvin2 (Aug 7, 2010)

The initial thought that sparked the *Flank Hawk * occurred while I was driving home from work in my 1990 Ford Ranger. I was thinking about a few of the books I'd recently reread: Roger Zelazny's *The Guns of Avalon* and Harry Turtledove's *World War: In the Balance*. One of the main turning points in *Guns of Avalon * occurs when Prince Corwin discovers a way to get gunpowder to function in the magical city of Amber.* In the Balance * is about an alien invasion during the height of World War II. The disparity in technology between the invaders and humanity is a major element in the novel's conflict.

Then I began to ponder, what would happen if a dragon encountered a World War II aircraft? Maybe one can see how the line of thought formed. From there I began to devise a world where such an encounter could take place. Then came the peoples and creatures that would inhabit the world, how it came to be, and the long-running, multilayered power struggle that would come to influence events in the plot that I was devising. Finally, came Krish and Lilly, Roos and Road Toad-the main characters in the novel


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## A. S. Warwick (Jan 14, 2011)

I'm always getting inspirations from new stories - from other books, from movies, pictures, games, stray comments - they just sheet home in masses and I never have time to do anything with them and soon forget most of them.

For the two novels (and a couple of novelettes) the inspiration for the setting came when I realised my fantasy world was locked in a medieval stasis much like most fantasy.  The what if came to me of what if the world continued to advance?  So at first I went back and built it up from the stone age, through the bronze age and finally into the age of sail and gunpowder until it was a fantasy world at the Napoleonic Era of technology - magic and minotaurs meet muskets and man'o'war.

One of the novels mixes that up with inspiration from King Solomon's Mines.

The short stories were inspired by a wide range of things - why-is-it-so creation myths, the Iliad, Gladiator, the sword and sorcery style of Robert E Howard and Fritz Lieber, even one that wrote itself in my head while driving up to visit the folks one Christmas.


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## Edward C. Patterson (Mar 28, 2009)

And then there's my novel

Surviving an American Gulag

which was inspired from my autopbiographical experiences in the US Army during 1966. It was a tough time for me - both flesh and spirit unwilling as both were drafted. However, despite being 270 lbs and sexually confused at the time, I managed to stick it out (I went down to 162 and came quietly out of the closet - but didn't tell). The experience was first hand and visceral corraled in a special training area where the training was designed to shake me out. The anger that poured through my heart soon became something else - something that rage through me to a satisfactory and honorable conclusion. The Army won - andin that, I won. But thereby hands a tale.

Edward C. Patterson

_[sorry, Ed. No links in posts outside the Book Bazaar... --Betsy]_


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## William Woodall (Jun 8, 2009)

I've been inspired by a lot of things, over time.  My last novel, More Golden Than Day, had a lot to do with a boy I knew in Florida who was almost like a son to me, who died last year at the age of 17 from alcohol poisoning.  We don't know for sure whether it was intentional or not.  That was a rough time for me, and it led me to do a lot of thinking about the things we choose to live and die for when the chips are down.  I still miss him often, but a lot of him went into that story.  Not like a biography, but it led me to take my main character and have him wrestle with some of the same questions I'd been dealing with.


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## MH Sargent (Apr 8, 2010)

My grandfather inherited a dairy farm in Norwalk, Calif., but he worked as an attorney. Like many farmers in the area, Japanese-American tenant farmers handled the day to day activities of his farm. During WWII, all the Japanese-Americans were sent to camps and people scrambled to keep their farms going. One day a neighbor's teenage son uncovered a large anti-aircraft gun hidden under some hay in the barn. The Army was called and carted it off. That story always stirred my imagination and this weekend I just published a murder mystery inspired by this story, called, _Toward Night's End. _


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## Miriam Minger (Nov 27, 2010)

A.S. Warwick said:


> I'm always getting inspirations from new stories - from other books, from movies, pictures, games, stray comments - they just sheet home in masses and I never have time to do anything with them and soon forget most of them.


Ah, but it's the ones we DO remember and stick in our minds that become great stories.

Happy Memorial Day weekend, everyone!

Miriam Minger


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## Romi (Apr 4, 2011)

My inspiriation for "The Book of Awful" was more of a way to get therapy without paying for therapy . The answer's best described on The Brooklyn Scribbler's blog, as she kindly let me explain it in a guest post: http://thebrooklynscribbler.blogspot.com/2011/05/new-voices-romi-moondi.html

Excerpt:_ "Write what you know" has inspired me from the very beginning.

Maybe it's because there's an endless source of fodder when you're raised by the strictest Indian parents in Canada.

Maybe it's because I only meet the most random men in situations where it's doomed to fail (i.e. a British Barista at Starbucks, an Australian writer, or a Swiss music exec). This leads me to believe that my life is a demented rom-com, which is a huge inspiration in my writing.

Or maybe it's because embarrassing situations define my world, so it's easy to insert them into writing.

My latest effort and first self-published ebook is yet another example of "write what you know."

It's a parody of the bestselling "The Book of Awesome", and my decision to write this came at a rather dark period in my life. Imagine your heart as shards of glass on the floor, then suddenly a dump truck of someone's positive thoughts runs it over. That dump truck was the rise of "The Book of Awesome", in Spring 2010..." _

Happy Memorial Day weekend to my American friends!


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## Miriam Minger (Nov 27, 2010)

Romi said:


> My inspiriation for "The Book of Awful" was more of a way to get therapy without paying for therapy . Or


Love that! That's what spewing your heart and soul into a book is all about, isn't it?

I know more tales of inspiration are out there. C'mon and join the party. 

Miriam Minger


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## EliRey (Sep 8, 2010)

The first in my Moreno Brothers series was a story in the making since high school. Originally the inspiration came from three brothers who actually went to my school and were just so dreamy. While the story is not about them directly it gave me a good premise to start a story about the popular jock in school trying to live up to his older brothers legacies and meeting and falling in love with the new girl in school. I didn't actually finish until YEARS later when I happen to come upon the few chapters I had written and got so into the story but was SO disappointed that I didn't finish and therefore didn't know what happened next so I decided to finish. I hadn't even planned on making it a series until I finished with Forever Mine and I missed the characters so much. So I decided I'd write a story for each brother. Then since they have a younger sister I thought it would be fun to write her story as well. I thought that would be it, 4 books for the series but I've actually received quite a few emails from readers who want to know if another big side character in the series (their best friend) will get his own book, so now I'm considering it.


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## Bryan R. Dennis (May 19, 2011)

I saw a coyote on a plot of land that was about to get leveled for new home construction. It stood on a hill watching the sun rise over Las Vegas. Sadness is recognizable across many species, and sadness was clearly what this poor animal felt at that moment. I never saw it again. That section of town is centered in the city now, and you'd never imagine wildlife reigned there once. I knew I had to write a novel for that critter, so I did. Little did I know that the inspiration would continue beyond just the first novel. Nearly everything I write is about something lost. You may not always be able to find it in my stories, as I do a good job bandaging it with humor, but it's there.


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## dmburnett (Feb 4, 2011)

Okay, I'm reading all these really cool stories of inspiration and it really makes me feel like a goof ball, but I'll share mine anyway.  For my romance novel, Two Out of Three, I was inspired by the Meatloaf song by the same name.


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## Miriam Minger (Nov 27, 2010)

dmburnett said:


> Okay, I'm reading all these really cool stories of inspiration and it really makes me feel like a goof ball, but I'll share mine anyway. For my romance novel, Two Out of Three, I was inspired by the Meatloaf song by the same name.


Nothing goofy about it. My historical/adventure romance WILD ANGEL was inspired by the Jimi Hendrix song "Voodoo Chile." And WILD ANGEL is set in medieval Ireland! 

Was touched, too, by the coyote story. See how these tales of inspiration can move us?

Miriam Minger


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## Miriam Minger (Nov 27, 2010)

EliRey said:


> The first in my Moreno Brothers series was a story in the making since high school. Originally the inspiration came from three brothers who actually went to my school and were just so dreamy.


The dreamy guys that inspired a whole series. Love it! Have you checked out the thread for Indie Romance Authors?

I know more tales of inspiration are bubbling out there. C'mon, join in the fun. 

Miriam Minger


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## K. A. Jordan (Aug 5, 2010)

These stories are great!

The restaurant that I wrote about in "Let's Do Lunch" is a real place. It was a bank in the Civil War days. I've eaten there quite a bit.

At one point it was up for sale, and I seriously considered buying it. But my family had been in the restaurant business before - I knew what could go wrong. Which had me off and running.

I kept asking 'how could this get worse?' and wrote it in. I was able to mash together a few really strange things from my days as a waitress and what it can be like to work with family.

I had a blast writing it.


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## LizSchulte79 (Jun 10, 2011)

Inspiration for Dark Corners came from my own life. When I was in college there was a period of about 3 or 4 months where either someone was coming into my house at will or it was haunted. It all started when a spare key I made for a family member went missing from my kitchen table and escalated from there. Food I bought from the grocery store would disappear, I could hear someone walking upstairs when I was downstairs, weird hang up calls would come all evening long, the dogs would take off barking for no reason, and various other creepy occurrences. I changed the locks then a few really nasty things happened, but eventually it died off and I had an idea for a book.


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## EGranfors (Mar 18, 2011)

STAIRS OF SAND (due out in July or August):  Family dysfunction and growing up to handle stress.


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## Guest (Jun 16, 2011)

College memories: "On/Off"

A horrible, horrrrrrrrible job at the University of Washington: "BBEM"


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## Miriam Minger (Nov 27, 2010)

Attebery said:


> A horrible, horrrrrrrrible job at the University of Washington: "BBEM"


I think most of us can relate to that!  I wonder if it's more bad experiences than good ones that inspire our stories. What do you think?

Miriam Minger


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## anne_holly (Jun 5, 2011)

My current full length was in some ways inspired by the Andrea Yates case in 2001 - she was the Texas woman who drowned her children. I read a lot about postpartum psychosis that summer, and the following year, all that reading made its way into _Strings Attached_.

Usually, though, my stories are inspired by some actor that I find desirable at the time, and then I fuel that by keeping on oogling the guy during the writing process and matching it with an appropriate music playlist. (Heaven bless Google Image Search!)

For example, the "hero" (is that the right word for a demon?) in _Waking Kara_ was inspired by Peter Steele (rest his soul), and a lot of goth music - and a tinge of the old _Gargoyles_ cartoon series for good measure. In _Unwrapping Scrooge_, it was Johnny Depp (main character) and Chiwetal Ejiofor (his agent) - that was a pretty yummy book to "research." The WIP I am editing right now (written during NaNo) was inspired by Canadian actor Paul Gross - he was my "muse" there. Most of my stories have "muse" actors.

And my current first-draft WIP was inspired by... just me and my life, oddly enough.

CYA Disclaimer:
Needless to say, the story lines themselves are my own, and all persons depicted therein are fictional.


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## Herc- The Reluctant Geek (Feb 10, 2010)

The inspiration for _Love Lust and Petty Crime_ was _Gertrude_ by Hermann Hesse. I absolutely love _Gertrude_ for its whimsical nature and not-quite-right plot (what the hell was Muoth doing to Gertrude to make her love him so much but be unable to live with him?), and was curious to see how Hesse's melancholy tale of unrequited love and music would fare if it was transpanted into a modern bureaucracy. It was a hell of a lot of fun finding out


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## Ilyria Moon (May 14, 2011)

Catharsis, mainly. Self-analysis, telling my stories and those of friends who are unable to tell their own stories because they didnt make it out alive or are gagged by their jobs, the need to create, entertainment (my own), and a little dash of revenge.


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## joshuaheights (Apr 21, 2011)

*Tear Avenger * is based on a true story about a woman I meet who was a victim of human trafficking . One day she came into a pizzeria I owned . We became friendly and after a month or so told me this horrific tale of her life . I lost touch with her and belived she either was sent back to Russia or was killed ...... *Tear Avenger , She will have you crying your eyes out ......literally*


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## Miriam Minger (Nov 27, 2010)

ilyria_moon said:


> Catharsis, mainly. Self-analysis, telling my stories and those of friends who are unable to tell their own stories because they didnt make it out alive or are gagged by their jobs, the need to create, entertainment (my own), and a little dash of revenge.


Love it!! Anyone else want to open a vein and spill a tale of inspiration?

The inspiration for my new thriller RIPPED APART is the power of a mother's love for her child...and whether that love is the catalyst for good or evil.



Miriam Minger


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## marshacanham (Jul 30, 2010)

The inspiration for Through A Dark Mist was a recurring dream I kept having...for about 8 years.  Same dream, all the time.  I was having lunch with my editor and mentioned it for some reason or other and she said why not write it down, sounds interesting.  I did, and it became the prologue for TADM, which in turn led to books 2 and 3 and became my Robin Hood trilogy *g*


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## sportourer1s (Oct 2, 2010)

My book, An Agent of the King is a Napoleonic Wars period adventure that is I hope a breath of fresh air in this crowded genre. I have tried to create an adventure that is both fast paced and believable, grittly realistic but exciting and fun at the same time. I have strived to give the readers historical realism but without becoming text book like as so many of the new writers in this field tend slip into. This is the kind of book used to enjoy so I hope others do to.


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## Carolyn J. Rose Mystery Writer (Aug 10, 2010)

Hemlock Lake was inspired by my childhood in the Catskill Mountains. And, just to be clear, arson and murder weren't part of that childhood. The place was so strong in my mind that I had to use it for the setting for a mystery.

An Uncertain Refuge sprang from experiences friends had with domestic violence, and from reading stories about wildlife rescue efforts.


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## Katy (Dec 16, 2010)

My main inspiration for Breakdown was my experience with a broken friendship and how it affected me for so long... and my feeling that a pandemic of tragic proportions is going to happen eventually. Yeah, I've got a few boxes of surgical masks in my closet...


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## ToniD (May 3, 2011)

I'm enjoying all these stories!

BADWATER was inspired by my experiences camping/hiking in Death Valley in late May (hot hot hot) and seeing a Japanese couple in full evening dress "hiking" up a canyon. Turns out they were staying at the fancy Furnace Creek Inn (hence the dress) and had come to see how hot hot is in the American west. 

The next day I was almost run down by a furious little whirlwind spinning down a canyon.

I thought, what a place to set a story.

And then I learned that there used to be a radioactive waste dump on the perimeter of Death Valley National Park.


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## Andrew Ashling (Nov 15, 2010)

My "_The Invisible Chains_"-series (_Bonds of Hate_, _ Bonds of Fear_ and soon _Bonds of Blood_) was inspired by several things.

There was a thread somewhere on rape and what should happen to rapists. Essentially it came down to the question _"Can rape ever be forgiven?"_ A lot of the posters seemed to think not, and that no fate was cruel enough for the rapist. It started me thinking.
In another thread I read that rape was mainly caused by misogyny. Really? Guys don't get raped, you think?
At the same time I became sick of a trope in my niche (m/m-romance, gay novels, although it originated in yaoi novels). Handsome, dominating man rapes little, cute younger guy. At first the latter resists, but then he falls in love with his rapist. I thought: WTF? You can't be serious...
Some further thinking led me to the question, "But what if there was some attraction _before_ the rape?"
I also wondered how far the victim could go to find peace of mind, or even exact revenge.

I wrapped all this up in a tale in a medieval setting.

_(To be honest, while the above is a big part of the story, there is also a lot of warfare, and there are tactical and strategical issues, dynastic struggles and political intrigue involved.)_


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## D/W (Dec 29, 2010)

Miriam, this has been a fantastic thread!  My interest has been piqued by many of these stories of inspiration.  As a result, I've purchased a number of books from authors here that I wouldn't have considered otherwise!  It's interesting to learn "the story behind the story."


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## Miriam Minger (Nov 27, 2010)

DreamWeaver said:


> Miriam, this has been a fantastic thread! My interest has been piqued by many of these stories of inspiration. As a result, I've purchased a number of books from authors here that I wouldn't have considered otherwise! It's interesting to learn "the story behind the story."


Perfect! Let's get right down to the heart of things and see what makes us all tick when it comes to our stories.

Miriam Minger


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## Decon (Feb 16, 2011)

I am choosing one of my short stories, The End, or a New Dawn.

The story is a climate disaster thriller, inspired by articles I have read regarding the oceans which have a far higher dangerous potential to add to green house gasses than is widely known. But more than anything I was inspired by the author Erich Von Daniken and his bestseller, Chariot of the Gods. The problem is, to say why would be to give away the story.

_[sorry, Decon, no self promotion outside the Book Bazaar....edited. --Betsy]_


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## AmandaHavard (Apr 25, 2011)

This is such a great thread... loving all the stories behind the stories.

For me, The Survivors started with a wedding. Really, the drive to said wedding. Two of my best friends were getting married in Tupelo, MS and somewhere between the Tennessee state line and Tupelo, Sadie entered my mind. On one of those rural highway loop-the-loop things, I could see and hear in my mind a mean-girl type saying, “Come on. When are you going to become Sadie, Sadie, married lady?” You know, like in Funny Girl. I wondered what she was doing and thought of how she was reacting to my surroundings. I thought about her throughout the weekend at the wedding... she was awkward, beautiful, and super stressed by her surroundings.

On my drive back from Tupelo I wrote a song, thought about Sadie, and felt more creativity than I'd felt in a while. Later, over a burger at Five Guys with a friend, I'd recounted the story with a friend and left the parking lot knowing I wanted to write a young adult series. The next 27 days are all in the book 

There's a much longer story on my website... but I figured I shouldn't bore you guys with the long version!


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## ketadiablo (Aug 6, 2010)

I'm always happy to talk about the inspiration behind my Native American paranormal _Where The Rain Is Made _because it brings back fond memories of my youngest son's childhood.

For some reason, my son, age 12, took an insane interest in American history, particularly the Native American tribes that once ruled the plains. His search took him into the fascinating life and demise of the Cheyenne dog soldiers. We spent hours at the library, poring over articles, reading through books and our arms were loaded by the time we left. He passed on most of what he learned to me through conversations at dinner or while he was reading (I was probably writing at the time). After a year or two, his reading interests veered toward another topic, which I think was the Mafia. By then, I too had become fascinated by the legend and lore associated with the dog soldiers and my son's voluminous notes honed that interest. It seemed perfectly natural to write a novel about them, a fiction novel, but based on true historical facts of the most important events that impacted Cheyenne life.

I hope you have a chance to read _Where The Rain Is Made_ and share in their fascinating history and their fateful ending.

Best, Keta Diablo

_[edited. Links to the book constitute self promotion outside the Book Bazaar, sorry. Thanks. --Betsy]_


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## Tommie Lyn (Dec 7, 2009)

What I learned about Scottish history, particularly about The Rising, "The '45," inspired me to start writing, period. I thought someone should write a fictionalized account of what happened during that time and its horrendous aftermath, because I thought people ought to know about it, and most folks won't pick up a history book but might read entertaining fiction. I knew I couldn't write fiction, so I first tried to talk others into writing it. No one would. A history professor told me, "If you want it written, write it." So I did. I took a couple of creative writing classes...and wrote _High on a Mountain_. And it took four years to edit and polish it into a readable tale.

During those four years of polishing, I found I couldn't quit writing. And while _High on a Mountain_ inspired a whole series of historical novels which I've been working on (the titles of the next three stories came to me just after I finished writing the rough draft of the first), I'm also, at the same time, writing contemporary suspense/thrillers. I find I have to set a story aside after I've written the rough draft...I have to let it cool before I start the edit process. And during that cooling period, I usually start another story.

Titles are very important to my "inspiration." Most of the time, I come up with a title and a story emanates from it. I set my fingers on the keyboard, start typing, and see what results. I'm very much a pantser, and writing, for me, is as much a process of discovery as reading someone else's story...it's an adventure. Early on during the writing of a new story, I get a feeling about it, and I look for a piece of music that underscores that feeling. I put that music on my MP3 player, don the headphones and set the player on repeat. And then I let my fingers fly across the keyboard.


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## Elizabeth Black (Apr 8, 2011)

My two books "An Unexpected Guest" and "The Haunting Of The Sandpiper Inn" were influenced by my experiences in a Maryland haunted bed and breakfast. I also set both books in a fictitious village similar to the small Massachusetts coastal town where I live. I used to go ghost hunting when I was in college and those experiences played a part in both books. For more detail about my haunted B&B experiences, go here:

http://elizabethablack.blogspot.com/2011/04/inspiration-haunting-in-maryland.html

_[removed links to the book--no self promotion outside the Book Bazaar itself, sorry. --Betsy]_


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## monicaleonelle (Oct 7, 2010)

My novel was inspired by this guy I had a crush on in grade school! He was really good looking, and the nicest, kindest guy. Rykken is a hyped up version of him, as perfect and sweet as he was.


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## Nick Wastnage (Jun 16, 2011)

For this one, Electronic Crime in Muted Key, about a man who fakes his death, I heard a couple of guys in a restaurant talk about the plans of one of them to fake his death and disappear to escape his debts. I was on my own and moved my chair a bit nearer and overheard the entire conversation. I didn't finish my meal but did race home and fire up my PC and start writing a story. I never heard anything more about the two guys, but I did have a finished crime thriller.


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## Nancy Fulda (Apr 24, 2011)

The inspiration for _The Man Who Murdered Himself_ was a little book I've always loved called _Born Different_. It contained short biographies of real-life "freaks": The original Siamese Twins, the Bearded Lady... and Joseph Merrick, "The Elephant Man".

Merrick fascinated me. This poor guy spent his life becoming increasingly deformed, and yet he managed to leave a positive impression on humanity. So when I started in on the first draft of _The Man Who Murdered Himself_ and needed a disease to afflict my protagonist, I chose neurofibromatosis: the same disease The Elephant Man had.


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## Violette_D (Jun 22, 2011)

I really just wanted to write a paranormal story that was interesting and based on Greek mythology.


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## Miriam Minger (Nov 27, 2010)

marshacanham said:


> The inspiration for Through A Dark Mist was a recurring dream I kept having...for about 8 years. Same dream, all the time. I was having lunch with my editor and mentioned it for some reason or other and she said why not write it down, sounds interesting. I did, and it became the prologue for TADM, which in turn led to books 2 and 3 and became my Robin Hood trilogy *g*


So cool, Marsha. I'm enjoying reading all of these fascinating tales of inspiration. Take some time out from celebrating July 4th and share what inspired YOUR book.

Miriam Minger


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## Ian Fraser (Mar 8, 2011)

Well, for the 'Depths of Deception' - one day I just had this creepy image of dead people walking casually and talking in thick snow on an ice shelf (although the book isn't horror at all) and it stuck with me.  Cue the start of an old school adventure thriller...

For the big (650 pages) 'Fairyland & the Revolution' - I had the thought that there isn't enough comedy about Hell. Everyone takes fantasy so seriously, I reckoned it might be fun to start in the most unfunny place possible (Hell), and see what happens next. So the story starts off there. I wanted to take all the well-known 'fantasy' elements and mess with them straight-faced, and see how people coped.


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## Richard Raley (May 23, 2011)

For "The Betrothal: Or How I Saved Alan Edwards from 40 Years of Hell" it has two sources. The first comes from a friend _actually_ going on a mission to Chile. The whole time he was there we traded letters/emails and one of them was me creating this fake scenario about his father trying to get him married to a girl he'd never met the moment my friend touched US soil. Seemed like an obvious book plot.

The second is that I started writing *very* seriously in 2008 and at the time fiction was pretty depressing and the world was even more depressing with all the layoffs, so I wrote a comedy to cheer people up.

"Prime Pickings" comes from a dream I had about living above monsters.


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## Guest (Jul 1, 2011)

Why did I write *Wolf Hunt*?

Well, there are several reasons, and one of them is the fact that in most alternate history novels I know of you'll have to search for German protagonists (instead of just antagonists) with an electron microscope. Sure, you've nearly always one or two "good" Germans, but I never came across a story where the ratio of plot dedicated to the Germans and the Allies hovered at 50/50. So I wrote one.

I also found most AH novels involving time travel to be utterly _predictable_. Not _bad_, mind, but _predictable_. Modern day humans go back to WW2 to help the Allies against the Nazis: by Book 2/3 the USA wins. It's always been a foregone conclusion because in every scenario the US did get the toys while the Axis maybe got a handful of traitors. So I put that scheme on its head by having two groups of modern day humans displaced back in time, and it's the modern day Germans who keep their gear. Because to write AH in a way where the end isn't immediately predictable there have to be offsets to the US's inherent industrial superiority. To make AH interesting you need butterflies. I wrote butterflies!

I also wanted to write *Wolf Hunt* to show something of the banality of evil one could find in totalitarian regimes. Nazism was so frightening not only because of the deeds it committed, but also because of the utter _normalcy_ of the people who committed them.

Last but not least it was my way to deal with the overrepresentation of the German guilt complex and the Holocaust in the German media and the education system. You get those crammed down your throat so much here you either end up a lobotomized drone or are ready to explode. I needed an outlet that allowed me to deal with my experiences without turning me into an utter cynic.


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## SJCress (Jun 5, 2011)

Awesome thread, I love reading the myriad list of inspirations 

I've lived in a fantasy world my entire life, it was only a matter of time before some of it found its way to paper (or, um, onto screens). I've always told myself stories to help me fall asleep...still do. My current world, where the two short stories in the anthology take place (and where my half-finished series is)? That inspiration hit me, as many do, in the shower...


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## Miriam Minger (Nov 27, 2010)

SCiofalo said:


> Awesome thread, I love reading the myriad list of inspirations
> 
> I've lived in a fantasy world my entire life, it was only a matter of time before some of it found its way to paper (or, um, onto screens).


I bet a lot of us could say that about the fantasy world! 

Miriam Minger


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## dabnorfish (Jun 30, 2011)

Most times, I'll start with a phrase and go on from there. The Expendable Mr.Skimble, I was walking up the road to the pub, when the phrase "Frank Skimble was an Expendable. His parents had been Expendables too," popped into my head.  It took me a while to figure out what it meant to be an Expendable was (this was before the film, mind, so my brain wasn't clouded with explosions), and the story went on from there.  The novel I'm working on at the moment, working title 'The Inevitable Acquiescence of Emmerson Sneyd' was inspired by hearing of Seve Ballesteros's illness.  Silver Snakes, the titular story of my collection, was a story I'd had knocking around in my head, but then me and a girl split up, I read Puig's Kiss of the Spider Woman and some Frank O'Hara poetry and it all came together.


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## Beth Groundwater (Apr 6, 2011)

I used to be a "river rat" in the 1980s, paddling whitewater rivers back east in an open-boat canoe stuffed full of floatation bags. So, when I started developing a new mystery series, I thought why not write about a sport I still love (though now I take commercial whitewater rafting trips in the west, primarily the Arkansas River in Colorado)? Thus the idea for the Rocky Mountain Outdoor Adventures mystery series was born. To solve the amateur sleuth problem I have with my Claire Hanover gift basket designer series (Why is she investigating the crime vs leaving it to the cops?), I made the sleuth in my new series a member of law enforcement: a whitewater river ranger.

It's true that you should write what you know--or love. I had so much fun interviewing river rangers and observing their training. And I think that love comes through in the writing. Whitewater rafting guides have praised the first book in the series, DEADLY CURRENTS, for its authenticity, and it has received good reviews from Booklist, Kirkus Reviews, Library Journal, Publishers Weekly, Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, Mystery Scene and more. Also, even non-swimmers and those afraid of the water have told me that they enjoy the book, because of the mystery puzzle.


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## SaraDagan (May 25, 2011)

There are two actually 

In _Princess Maya & the Crystal ball _, a Fairy Tale for Grownups & Children at Heart I was inspired both by 



, the beautiful famous song of Hadjidakis' as well as my own biography.


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## 40977 (Mar 31, 2011)

Hot Ticket was inspired by my colleague at the time, who used the phrase "Hot Ticket" and "Shame Ticket" the same way my friends and I would say "Points" or "Negative points" when we were in high school, depending on if somebody did something cool or uncool.  So I started thinking about what would happen if Hot Tickets were physical things, and one anonymous person in middle school was kinda running things from behind the scenes by secretly handing out hot and shame tickets.

My main character is a bit like I was in sixth grade, but with much worse luck, and tunnel vision when it comes to figuring out who is handing out those tickets!  (She's funnier than I was in sixth grade too. )


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## Fredster (Apr 11, 2011)

_No Limit_ was inspired by an idea I had while hiking alone on a local mountain. As I worked my way through a particularly lonely spot, my muse spoke up and said, _what would you do if a child suddenly stumbled out of the undergrowth in front of you, and begged you to help him?_

A few steps later, _what if he was followed by a couple of guys with guns?_

And just after that, _what if he was hiding a fantastic new ability and had just escaped from the place where they were keeping him?_

It just sort of grew from there.


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## Margo Lerwill (Jun 13, 2011)

I really love history and mythology and how they shape and are shaped by local culture.  I'd been reading lots of urban fantasy (but writing epic fantasy) and studying Norse mythology, and I became engrossed with the idea of modernizing the gods and supernatural creatures of Norse myth while staying as true as possible to the spirit of the culture and the values that shaped the ancient Norse.

Now I'm planning one more short story and a series of urban fantasy novels leading up to a modern-day Ragnarok.  In California.


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## J.G. McKenney (Apr 16, 2011)

_Eon's Door_ is a product of my love for works of fantasy and deep appreciation for the natural world. I wanted to write something that would have appealed to me as a younger reader, but that I'd still find interesting and compelling as an adult. I love books with fascinating worlds, lots of action, bigger than life characters, and a plot that keeps me turning pages. I think that's what I've accomplished, but you be the judge.


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## Nancy Beck (Jul 1, 2011)

I'm just uploading my debut, Changing Faces, this weekend. (It's currently in review on Amazon, and it's #206 in the Smashwords queue.)

Anyway, back a number of years ago, after selling a short story on just the third try, I was really feeling my oats. I was inspired by a line in a Beatles song (Eleanor Rigby): "Waits at the window, wearing the face that she wears in the jar by the door."

I vaguely remember that version of it, and I now realize it really wasn't good, so the online mags I sent it to were right to reject it.

I never forgot the idea of that line. And I wanted to write a contemporary fantasy, something about the small town I live in (by New Jersey standards, anyway, lol) and something I wouldn't need to research the heck out of (I love research - I probably should've become a research librarian  ). I thought the first runthrough of the story was okay, but nothing special; I d/l an ebook on writing novels, really pouring your thoughts and fears into it, which was missing in the first iteration.

I think what I came up with for my main character is really about me: My shyness, my fears, the fact that I usually don't find out about things until the last possible second. It became sort of a catharsis for me, as I poured some of my anger and hurts into the story...

But there's plenty of humor, as the main character doesn't take herself too seriously; it's her way of dealing with the death of her teacher (she has a magical ability) and the fact that her mother has early-onset Alzheimer's.

Although I wrap up the major problem in the book, there are other threads that are hinted at but not explained until the second book in the series. (I project it as a trilogy.)

Sorry to go on, but I was inspired by the other posts here. There's always a story behind the story, isn't there?


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## TWGallier (Apr 21, 2011)

Everyone has such great and sometimes quite significant inspirations.  Of my current two books up, I don't recall the inspiration for "Edge of Darkness" a Fantasy novel.  Now "Long Day's Night" is about vampire hunters/slayers in Dallas, and is a short story inspired by the sister of the main POV character of my upcoming release, "Black Heart."  Black Heart was inspired by Kate Beckinsale's character of Selene in Underwolrld.  One scene in the movie just hit me with the inspiration stick, and the whole story all but sprang in my head.  Never happened before, or since.


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## J. Carson Black (Feb 27, 2011)

My thriller, DARKNESS ON THE EDGE OF TOWN, was inspired by two cops: one, a friend of mine at TPD (Tucson Police) and the other, an undercover agent in the new anti-terrorist unit in Arizona in 2006.  They came to me with a simple plea: to rip the roof off the roach motel of sexual predators on the internet.  I didn't know if I could handle such a tough subject, but I had in mind a good female cop, an Arizona Department of Public Safety detective, who troubleshoots homicides in small towns throughout the state.   

So I gave it my best shot, with the help of my DPS detective, Laura Cardinal.  Laura is not a cop with a chip on her shoulder. She does not have a gambling or drinking problem, and while she has a boyfriend problem, you understand that if it came to a choice between the boyfriend and job, the boyfriend would be gone.  Laura is what a good cop should be.  She is strong, she is scrupulous, she believes in what she's doing, and she has a sense of humor.  And she's smart.  She has to have a sense of humor to navigate the shoals of both her job and the high-powered interests arrayed against her.  

She does not suffer fools gladly.  

I have grown to love and admire Laura, who is a much better person than I could ever be.  

And she gets the bad guy in the end.


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## Miriam Minger (Nov 27, 2010)

TWGallier said:


> Everyone has such great and sometimes quite significant inspirations.


And all very unique and intriguing to read. If you have a moment, join us with your tale of inspiration.

Miriam Minger


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## Miriam Minger (Nov 27, 2010)

J. Carson Black said:


> I have grown to love and admire Laura, who is a much better person than I could ever be. And she gets the bad guy in the end.


Don't you just love it when your characters grow to mean so much to you? It's difficult sometimes to finish writing that story and have to say goodbye to them...except then your readers get to have all the fun by getting to know them, too. 

Miriam Minger


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## MJFredrick (Jun 20, 2011)

I was up late one night watching the Travel Channel or something, and I saw a show about cruises to Antarctica. It sounded SO COOL. But I'm a big chicken so I knew I'd never go, but I couldn't stop thinking about it. I did a lot of research and wrote several versions of Midnight Sun before I hit on a more suspenseful plot of a cruise ship being overtaken by pirates, and more fun characters. I came up with Marcus because I wanted a bad boy hero who was looking for his place in the world. And Brylie is a woman who can't seem to make the right decisions when it comes to men. I loved writing this book!


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## Miriam Minger (Nov 27, 2010)

MJFredrick said:


> I was up late one night watching the Travel Channel or something, and I saw a show about cruises to Antarctica. It sounded SO COOL. But I'm a big chicken so I knew I'd never go, but I couldn't stop thinking about it. I did a lot of research and wrote several versions of Midnight Sun before I hit on a more suspenseful plot of a cruise ship being overtaken by pirates, and more fun characters. I came up with Marcus because I wanted a bad boy hero who was looking for his place in the world. And Brylie is a woman who can't seem to make the right decisions when it comes to men. I loved writing this book!


See? Out of one TV show came the inspiration for a great book. 

C'mon authors, inspire us with your own tales of inspiration.

Miriam Minger


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## NS (Jul 8, 2011)

My novel based on a real story, that my mom told me. I was fascinated, I had to write it. The body count in my story happened to be a little higher though.


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## Pamela Davis (Feb 7, 2011)

My book Gaia Dreams was inspired by several things. I had gone back to school and was studying anthropology in college and the impact of various cultures on the environment. At the same time, I'd become aggravated by not finding any good disaster novels to read at the time. I've always loved disaster novels that involved the struggle to survive and answer the question, 'what happens next?' after the disaster. The third factor was an interest in dreams, and the idea of prophetic dreams in particular. Finally, I had an assignment to write something about the mind and what our minds can do. It made me ask that age old question 'what if?'--suddenly all these factors came together in my head and I saw the characters and heard their voices. It was time to write.


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## Ilyria Moon (May 14, 2011)

Great thread


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## Miriam Minger (Nov 27, 2010)

ilyria_moon said:


> Great thread


Thanks! So...what inspired your book?

Miriam Minger


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## JRTomlin (Jan 18, 2011)

The inspiration behind my historical novels? A quote from the great Scottish poet John Barbour which is on the plaque which covers where Robert the Bruce's heart lies:

_A noble heart may have no ease if freedom fail_.

The struggle for freedom for me is epitomised by the centuries long struggle of the Scots to maintain and defend their freedom. It represents the struggle of all people for the right to self-determination. What price freedom?

From the Scots in 1320, another statement has echoed down the ages:

_It is in truth not for glory, nor riches, nor honours that we are fighting, but for freedom - for that alone, which no honest man gives up but with life itself._


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## Samuel Thews (Jul 12, 2011)

The way my MC is drawn into his adventure is by waking up in the middle of the night with the feeling that someone is in his room, and there actually is. My inspiration for this was one night I woke up and had that feeling and could not shake it and it spawned the idea for the book. So scribbled it all down in the dark and although I could barely read it the next morning, the story was born.


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## Theresaragan (Jul 1, 2011)

Interesting question. Inspiration for my most recent release, Abducted, my first romantic thriller, came from too many years of writing and not selling to NY. I decided to kill off a few characters and my frustrations at the same time. It worked, too.


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## Colin Taber (Apr 4, 2011)

I wrote my first book as a prequel to set the scene for an as yet unreleased sweeping and epic series.

The basic premise was to get away from the fantasy cliche of a character questing to save a world from some dark and dire overlord or doom. What I'd been toying with was setting a story in a world where that doom had come to pass, and where now all that remained was falling into decrepit ruin. 

What I wanted to do was tell the story about a last flickering light of hope set amidst such gathering gloom.

I tend to think of my first trilogy as a story of hope, as the rekindling of a dying fire, and of what the true cost might be to do such a thing. It is about uncovering the depth of corruption and ruin in a world gone sour and utilisiing that truth to begin to build again, to stir the flames, while founding such hope on grave sacrifice and very determined efforts. 

While I think of it as a tale of hope, something perhaps built to counter my own dark moods, the original launch was soured by the death of my brother who committed suicide just weeks before the book's release. Such a thing reminded me of how important it is to have hope, and to stoke those fires for others, to show that there is always light, somewhere, and that life is worth living.


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## Author Eyes (Nov 26, 2009)

The inspiration for Radium Halos was a documentary I watched in the late 1980s on the Discovery Channel, called "Radium City." 

For Celebrities for Breakfast, my inspiration was a segment on E! many years ago (I wrote the first draft in the early 2000s), about a personal shopper for celebrities.


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## dvberkom (Jan 3, 2011)

I just stumbled on this thread...loved reading about people's inspiration. For Bad Spirits, mine was after reading so many articles about drug cartel violence in Mexico, and the impact it has on such a family-oriented society. Of course, I love to blow stuff up in my stories and put my heroine in completely compromising positions, so I had to write a somewhat naive character who makes huge mistakes and ends up paying a high price for it. I lived in Mexico when I left college, and loved it, so I also wanted to write what I knew. That country left a mark on me I'll not soon forget.

As for Dead of Winter, I took the same heroine, Kate, and put her in Alaska, another place I've lived that had a profound impact on my life. She's still on the run from the drug cartel, and what better place to hide than small town Alaska? The next one in the series, Dead Rites, is coming out this month and Kate's on the North Shore, yet another place I adore. All of the books have a (very slight) sub-theme of shamanism, in which I'm fascinated. 

And ultimately, if it's not fun to write, I don't ...


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## xandy3 (Jun 13, 2010)

My upcoming short ebook _A Prince Reborn_ was inspired by a painting by the Brothers Hildebrandt. I would post a link to the image here if I can find it...but I haven't been able to.

It was a lovely picture of a young merman prince sitting on a pearl throne. Very sweet, serene image.


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## anne_holly (Jun 5, 2011)

I love this thread! 

This is also one of my favourite questions to be asked during interviews.


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## Nick Wastnage (Jun 16, 2011)

I don't know if any of you guys over the other side of the pond follow any of this Murdoch, phone hacking stuff that's been going on over here in the UK but it sure makes interesting reading and good inspiration for a novel.


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## Nancy Beck (Jul 1, 2011)

What a great topic, and it's interesting reading everyone's inspiration.  

For my novella series (I figured I'd go shorter to gain more knowledge as to cover images, formatting, etc.), I looked no further than the town hubby and I have been living in for the past almost 20 (!) years.

It's a small town by New Jersey standards, and if you've ever lived in New Jersey, you'd understand, lol. There's less than a thousand people living there, but there are plenty of characters...which is why I decided to write a contemporary fantasy about it (over 3 books). From the dude across the street who shovels his snow at midnight (true story; my hubby saw him doing it, in the middle of a snowstorm, when hubby was having insomnia), to his kids, whom I've only seen a few times during the day (mostly at night)...well, I decided the time was right. And the idea for the first one, Changing Faces, is from a line in Eleanor Rigby. (See if you can guess which one.   )

For a short story I just wrote, 10 Cent Wings, I was inspired by the same-named Jonatha Brooke song, one of my faves. Although the story has nothing to do with what she's singing about, lol. I married the idea of a down-and-out boxer in the early 1950s with a crabgrass-voiced "angel" (the boxer's name for a fairie, because, um, he'd feel less than a man calling it a fairie). And I'm formulating a prequel of sorts, also a short, but a longer short story, since the first one is only about 2,700 words long.

Longer short story...kind of reminds me of George Carlin and his routine about jumbo shrimp...


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## Miriam Minger (Nov 27, 2010)

Theresaragan said:


> Inspiration for my most recent release, Abducted, my first romantic thriller, came from too many years of writing and not selling to NY. I decided to kill off a few characters and my frustrations at the same time. It worked, too.


Love that, Theresa! I'm sure we all share in that sentiment--but hey, we're indie authors now!!!

So if you're sitting back and pondering your navel and want to share your tale(s) of inspiration, please do. 

Miriam Minger


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## NS (Jul 8, 2011)

The idea for a novel I'm writing now, came from the road. I was driving, I was bored and I thought... what if there was a body in a trunk? What if the person hid in that trunk from someone. The person wanted to be safe but got into a bigger danger?... And now it's over 100.000 words supernatural thriller.


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## leearco (Jul 17, 2011)

I write about real practical steps to build self confidence that I used myself.
So many people suffer from having low self confidence and low self esteem and existing works only give very limited practical advice on building confidence. Because of this I really wanted to share what I had learnt.


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## Guest (Jul 28, 2011)

An author discussing "show don't tell" used "Bob told me that" as an example of a phrase writers should avoid. I started thinking about what if Bob hadn't told the person everything. What would be the worst thing he could not mention, the worst time for the character to find it out and the worst person for him to have misled...

The rest of the Docks built itself from that.


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## Rex Jameson (Mar 8, 2011)

*Lucifer's Odyssey*, and the Primal Patterns Series in general, has an odd past. It was inspired by three things that merged into this first book.

1.) I work in a pretty abstract world in real life, and I love distributed, emergent behaviors. Fields like Chaos Theory and String Theory fascinate me. Our ability to perceive emergent phenomena from interactions involving billions or trillions of individuals is often easy to do if we are looking down at the results of those interactions, but if we are part of those interactions, the behaviors are often hard for the average person to figure out. I wanted to weave a multiverse-level story that involved creatures that could see the bigger picture for a set of universes and what the effect of those creatures in the picture would mean for everyone else.
2.) I have a fondness for Roger Zelazny's _Amber Series_, the scope of Neil Stephensen's _The Baroque Cycle_ and concepts in _The Diamond Age_, and an affinity for the type of technology tinkering and sci-fi concepts explored by Vernor Vinge in several of his novels. But if there is a set of works that has more influence than the others, it's the _Amber Series_.
3.) One of the more interesting concepts I found from classic literature was Plato's concept of the Forms. According to Plato, the Forms are where perfect ideas and truths are found, and that whenever we "discover" or "invent" something, we are trying to bring these perfect ideas into an imperfect world, and flaws happen because of the human in the loop (e.g., the scientist or storyteller). I always wanted to write an origin story for Lucifer and Jehovah, angels and demons, and even elves and goblins, that was based on this concept. Our stories are imperfect and the truth is that these immortal creatures do exist and that mankind has a role in an ongoing conflict that spans a type 4 multiverse.

If I've done my job right, the reader only has to be aware of a coherent, engaging story with characters that they will care about. Hopefully, the result is something that is fantastic but also possible, even if remotely so, which I think is a good mark of speculative fiction.


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## karenk105 (Jul 7, 2011)

I have an interesting story behind Senseless Sensibilities. When I was in the 2nd grade, my older sister wrote a novella that was kind of like "The Princess Diaries." There was a character named Jonathan Winters, and he was a funny butler. Well, Amy (that's my sister) totally forgot about Jonathan Winters halfway through the book! He didn't come around again, and it crushed my little 8-year-old heart!

Fast forward a zillion years... now Jonathan Winters is in MY book, and he's a valet! It's a different character, same name, and I borrowed a few elements.


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## destill (Oct 5, 2010)

The inspiration for my forthcoming novel, _When Horses Had Wings_, was my earlier life as a high school dropout and teen mom and, much later, my experiences as a GED instructor.

My novel follows the life of sixteen-year-old Renee Goodchild, who lives on a rural farm in Texas where her father uses her as his plow horse. (She has to pull a plow because the family is too poor to own a tractor--and she eats less than a horse.) When Renee unwittingly trades one form of abuse for another, she ends up pregnant, further impoverished, and imprisoned by her violent husband, Kenny. The key to a happier life, however, can be found in Kenny's car. But before she can escape to a better future, she must first decide which path holds the greatest risk: driving or being driven.

On a wholly different note, the inspiration behind my latest collection of humor essays, Crap Chronicles: When IBS Strikes in all the Wrong Places, was all the funny stories my family shared about being struck by intestinal disorders when traveling in remote locations. Here's a link to a blog post I wrote that explains more about how this eBook originated: http://www.totallyskewed.wordpress.com.


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## PatrickWalts (Jul 22, 2011)

The idea for my novel "The Act of Laughing" came about as a result of my reading up on ancient Carthage, and the supposed practice of sacrificing children to Ba'al. (Yes, I'm aware that it is debatable whether or not these things really took place) It occurred to me that a book about a modern-day cult who has picked up where these ancient Phoenicians left off would make for a truly scary read. Instead of making sacrifices so that Ba'al would bless their crops and give them a bountiful harvest, however, the desires of these cult members are more modern; Things such as having a perfect lawn, or gaining social and political clout in one's community.  (The whole thing is basically a thinly-veiled jab at homeowners' associations.   ) The title itself was a phrase the Carthaginians supposedly used to describe the appearance of a burning corpse, the way the facial muscles would contract and stretch the victim's face into a "smile."


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## Doug DePew (Mar 26, 2011)

rexjameson said:


> 2.) I have a fondness for Roger Zelazny's _Amber Series_...


I absolutely love the Amber Series. I bought them in a set from Science Fiction Book Club when I was in high school and read them several times.

I've been unable to find one of the volumes for years, though. I'm sure it's somewhere. I just can't remember where. I love those books!


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## AnnetteL (Jul 14, 2010)

Fascinating thread!

LOST WITHOUT YOU was inspired by a dream I had when my kids were really little--what if I died and left them without a mother? The antagonist popped into my head after read (of all things) an Ann Landers column.

AT THE WATERS EDGE is around largely thanks to three years I lived in Helsinki, Finland. My mom's Finnish, my Dad's American, so the idea of their love story was a spring board for making up a cross-Atlantic romance. (The story isn't theirs, though.)

My most recent (trad pubbed) novel, BAND OF SISTERS, came about after seeing a good friend go through deployment and then interviewing her and some Army wife friends for an article about what deployment is like on the home front. The subject haunted me until I gave in and wrote a novel about it.

My next Kindle title (to be live any day now!) was inspired by a painting.


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## Miriam Minger (Nov 27, 2010)

AnnetteL said:


> Fascinating thread!


Thanks, Annette. It is fascinating to read everyone's tales of inspiration behind their books so keep them coming.

Oh yes, and have a fantastic weekend!

Miriam Minger


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## FrankZubek (Aug 31, 2010)

This starts out in sci-fi and winds up as a young adult book!

I was watching Deep Space Nine one evening specifically because the actor who plays Captain Sisko (Avery brooks I think) was directing this particular episode

In the episode he dreams that he is a black writer in a time when black writers had trouble getting published. Revealing his frustrations to his friends, one of them suggests to him he would get published faster if he "wrote his stories in chalk on the sidewalk"

Now that one line made me literally get up off the couch and write it down. Imagine! The fragility of writing a story in chalk. people would walk on it or the rain would wash it away after a time. And then the story would be gone.

That was the start of inspiration that led me, back in 1999, to write Charlie's Corner. FROM that sci-fi episode and that one line about writing something in chalk on a sidewalk I came up with......   Charlie Wilson saves the life of a young girl by pushing her from the path of a truck. He dies from his wounds.
Eight years later- Michelle befriends his mom after she discovers that mrs Wilson has not gotten over Charlie's death.

So.....  Michelle interviews some of her neighbors and finds that Charlie actually did many errands for them all- and now that he is gone- their lives have been affected as well. So, she writes a tribute to Charlie- in chalk- on the sidewalk for the neighborhood, and Mrs Wilson, to see and to read.

This is a fun thread by the way- interesting stories from everyone!


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## Ann Herrick (Sep 24, 2010)

My first book _and _ my latest book both came from what I would have wished my summers would have been like when I was a teen--full of sun, sand and romance!  It's fun to stay in tune with those feelings.

Other books have come from bits and pieces of lives/situations of people I know or have read about, or even a little somethng I overheard somewhere.


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## VKScott (Apr 14, 2011)

A big part of the answer to this question is actually on a guest post I did for Scott Nicholson's blog: http://hauntedcomputer.blogspot.com/2011/07/vk-scott-on-writing-influences.html

The rest of the answer is this: I work at a public high school, and the differences in the way that teachers approached their jobs really fascinated me. Some treat their students like their own children, others treat them like soldiers in boot camp. Some of us love our job, others seem to just be there because they couldn't find work elsewhere.

When I decided to write a murder mystery novel, the conflicts already inherent in a high school faculty seemed ripe for writing about.


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## Miriam Minger (Nov 27, 2010)

Ann Herrick said:


> Other books have come from bits and pieces of lives/situations of people I know or have read about, or even a little somethng I overheard somewhere.


It's those "bits and pieces of lives/situations" that become the kernel for amazing stories--just like those described so far on this thread!

Miriam Minger


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## Angie Stanton (Jun 26, 2011)

I'm a what if girl. What if you were in this situation. My first book was 'what if you were stuck on a reality dating show and didn't want to be.' Great story as I could relate. "Love 'em or Leave 'em".

Next book is much deeper. Young Adult. My teenage daughter had a friend at school whose mother died when he was 14. He lived in Colorado and got shipped to Wisconsin to live with his abusive father who didn't really want him. How horrible for this grieving kid. I thought about how so many kids get a raw deal in life through no fault of their own. That is when I dreamed up "Rock and a Hard Place". Poor girl has sucky life through no fault of her own and awesome guy tries to save her. Of course, she goes through more tough stuff and eventually learns to take life into her own hands to survive. So many kids out there have no other choice but to figure it out for themselves. This story honors them.

I'm new to Kindle board and haven't uploaded any pics or promos, but I love this topic.


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## EGranfors (Mar 18, 2011)

My next book comes at the request of my thousands of students over years of teaching high school.  Most had a hard time accepting Sydney Carton's sacrifice in Tale of Two Cities.  I promised them I would write the prequel one day, and now I am!

The book that came out in July, "Stairs of Sand," is loosely based on life experiences with borderline personality disorder and a person trying to prove that the diagnosis is not their whole life.


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## Jason Kristopher (Jun 1, 2011)

I like this question, because my answer is very, very simple.

What inspired my book?  My job, because I don't want to do it anymore.


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## Ann Herrick (Sep 24, 2010)

Jason Kristopher said:


> I like this question, because my answer is very, very simple.
> 
> What inspired my book? My job, because I don't want to do it anymore.


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## Dan Ames (Feb 8, 2011)

Simple.  A joke.  My brother was in the Air Force during the first Desert Storm.  A co-worker suggested that I must be worried about him.  I said I was, but then added that, on the other hand, he had a really nice stereo system I would probably inherit if anything happened to him.  My co-worker was aghast.  I laughed and explained to her that my family used humor, usually sarcasm, to cover up any warm and fuzzy expressions of caring.  If my brother had been there, he would have laughed.  I decided to write a book with a heroine who did just that.  DEATH BY SARCASM is the result.  My family likes it.


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## Nick Wastnage (Jun 16, 2011)

The inspiration for *Murder He Forgot*, about a man who forgot he tried to kill his wife, came from a newspaper story about a man who lost his memory and did forget he'd tried to kill someone.


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## Philip Chen (Aug 8, 2010)

In my first response, I talked about how my novel predicted the Russian spy ring of 2010 right down to the gorgeous female spy posing as a financial consultant. Well it has happened again.

According to the news, Swedish explorers have just discovered a large mysterious object in the Baltic Sea. They do not believe that it is natural. http://on.io9.com/BalticSeaObject

Sound familiar?

They used side scan sonar, just like in my book. The following is an excerpt from my novel at the moment that the first mysterious object was seen on sonar on-board the USS _Marysville_. I can almost guarantee this is how it played out for the Swedes, as well.

*********

_The sound of the sonar systems filled the darkened instrumentation room on-board the U.S.S. Marysville as she maintained a straight heading under the skillful watch of Captain George Vander.
Up on the bridge behind Vander, Evans poured over the charts with Vander's navigator. Using dividers and rulers to plot their current position, Evans satisfied himself that their course was exactly the same course the Lockheed P-3B Orion had flown months before. The task was not that easy.
Consider trying to remotely tow a car using a cable deployed from an airplane over three miles up and several miles ahead. A rather formidable job that challenged even the time-tried skills of Vander, cigarette hanging from the corner of his mouth and a steaming cup of hot black coffee in his weathered left hand.
In the instrumentation room, several levels below deck, designed to be at the center of gravity of the vessel, Mike, McHugh, and Sevson crowded behind the Western Light sonar technician. The only moving thing in the tight cabin was the greenish trace on the cathode ray tube as it displayed the line by line return of the side scan sonar.
The only sounds other than the "blips" made by the sonar in the darkened room were the scratchy noises made by the pen registers as they recorded the images now being laid out on the cathode ray tube or CRT. If it weren't for the soft rolling of the Marysville, there would have been no indication that Mike was even at sea.
The trace on the sonar's oscilloscope held steady, a faint greenish line followed the brighter green dot that ran left to right across the circular screen. Except for occasional jiggles of the trace, which could be accounted for by changes in the local magnetic background of the ocean bottom, nothing unusual had occurred.
"Any more theories on the magnetic anomaly, Bob?" asked Sevson.
The ever present half smoked cigar dangling from the corner of his mouth, McHugh was absorbed in thought. The stale cigar smoke competed with the sweet smell of "Barking Dog" tobacco emanating from the corn-cob pipe in the corner of Sevson's mouth. The tinfoil packet from which Sevson constantly refilled his pipe had the subtext, "Barking Dogs Never Bite."
Absentmindedly, McHugh replied, "Nothing radical, Tom. If it is Russian, then we are in deep trouble. We won't be able to deploy a sizeable station at that depth for any period of time. Based on the magnetometer readings this thing, whatever it is, is substantial. If your Nematode, or whatever you call it, can help us locate the source of this anomaly, we can get down there with the Trieste for a look."
"Don't we have sonar arrays deployed at those depths?"
"No, our SOSUS nets are generally deployed at much shallower depths. No submarines are known to be able to dive to the depth associated with the anomaly. If the Russians have a submarine capable of that depth, they could hide in the submarine canyons off Santa Catalina Island and be within thirty miles of Los Angeles and not be detected by our SOSUS nets."
"Holy [ ]!" said Sevson, sinking into a chair. "[ ], it's Cuba all over again!"
"Let's not jump to conclusions, Tom. We have no knowledge that the Russians have that kind of technology. If they did, I think we would have heard by now."
"Bob, I think you'd better see this," interrupted Mike, who had been looking over the shoulder of the Western Light technician.
"Commander, we have a reading," called out the sonar technician. McHugh walked across the small room to stand behind the technician. On the CRT, the greenish lines were definitely displaying something.
The green trace was rising steadily, not in dramatic jumps, but steadily as each trace ran across the face of the oscilloscope, the tension in the instrumentation room grew. Evans and Sevson joined McHugh and Mike. More lines were painted vertically on the screen. Each new line gave a better indication of the shape and size of whatever the side scan sonar saw.
As the object began filling the screen of the CRT, McHugh asked the operator to turn on a backup plotter. McHugh went to the plotters and what he saw was something big, as big as a football field, and oval in cross section. This was not a natural feature like a rock outcropping or fault line.
"[ ]!" uttered Frederick Evans.
_
***********


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## summerdaniels71 (Jul 23, 2011)

The inspiration behind my first self-published effort was just how much I learned about myself over the past year or so since my divorce.

I thought it would be interesting to share that "journey" with others.  It only goes to show you are never "too old" to learn something new about yourself.

Summer


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## Miriam Minger (Nov 27, 2010)

Jason Kristopher said:


> I like this question, because my answer is very, very simple.
> 
> What inspired my book? My job, because I don't want to do it anymore.


That's about as basic as it gets, Jason! Okay, simple or complex, deep or not so deep, we are FASCINATED by everyone's tales of inspiration behind their books. It's time for show and tell, folks! 

Miriam Minger


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## Miriam Minger (Nov 27, 2010)

Wow, has August flown by!  Stepped away for a bit of a vacation and it's almost the end of the month.  

Okay, time to share your tales of inspiration behind your wonderful books.  You're up!

Miriam Minger


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## Tammie Clarke Gibbs (Dec 30, 2010)

Thanks for allowing you to share with you some interesting bits about what inspired me to write ISLAND OF SECRETS. 

One day I was reading a time travel book and right smack dab in the middle of the action a strange question occured to me. I wondered how it was that in every book I read no mention was made of what was going on while the heroine or hero was time traveling. Did noone realize they were gone? Really? Thus general ideas began to percolate.

Later, I was reading a local family history book a distant relative had put together, the type where your name is listed as the great, great granddaughter of ... There in front of me was a strange story in which one of two men cut his hand off and threw it onto dry land to claim an island. I'm being very general here, but you get the picture. On the front of said family history is a strange coat of arms that included said bloody palm. Now, I can't elaborate too much on what this story has to do with my novel that would just be a spoiler. 

Since I also love a good gothic romance, I thought it would be interesting to have a modern heroine time travel into a gothic enviroment. ISLAND OF SECRETS, explores how someone from our time would react to an old manor house, talk of ghosts and other spooky occurances.

Each of these things are important but the characters are what brings it all together. 

My book is categorized as a romance and it does have a love story, but it is so entwined with the plot I don't know how you would remove one from the other. It's very plot intensive so if you enjoy books that you can't figure within the first twenty pages, it may be a good fit for you. 

As with all books, none are created equal and there are readers for all types. If you find any of this interesting I would love for you to sample it. If you like it, wonderful, I've made a new reader friend, if not, well, I'd like to think I've still made a new friend and maybe you'll like my next book better. Speaking of which my upcoming release THE COUNTERFEIT will soon be out and to celebrate ISLAND OF SECRETS is on sale for .99 for a limited time.

Happy Reading and a wonderful day to you all!
Tammie

Island of Secrets


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## AzureHorizon (Aug 18, 2011)

Inception and transcendentalist philosophy.


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## MindAttic (Aug 14, 2011)

I started The Life and Times of Car Johnson on Christmas, during a lull in activities. That's why the story starts off talking about a Christmas party, even though everything after that is nothing to do with reality. My family doesn't hang beer bottles on the ceiling with tinsel and I'm not a middle aged male with a cow fetus collection. I guess the inspiration for the story was an odd sense of humor a bit of time on my hands.


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## Victoria J (Jul 5, 2011)

I just finished my first book in a series I'm writing. It's called The Green Door. It was inspired by my niece. She's smart as a whip, imaginative, brave and thoughtful. She reminds me of both my sister and myself.


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## Artemis Hunt (Aug 23, 2011)

I was working on a YA psychological thriller, then I saw 'Tangled'. I was so inspired by it that I had to write my current book that is out now! 

I loooove Disney/Pixar movies.


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## Bellagirl (Jul 23, 2011)

I was inspired by the events I went through when I was a teenager. I was recruited into a terrorist group that had been founded by a Canadian Intelligence agent. I ended up spying on them, testified against its leaders and went into hiding while the government agent was officially "cleared" of wrongdoing.
I initially wrote a memoir, was approached by Penguin, long story short, I turned them down, and changed the story into fiction.


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## anne_holly (Jun 5, 2011)

My newest full length was inspired by my experiences in teaching and as a single mother in academics.

Wow - I promise it isn't as boring as that sounds.


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## EGranfors (Mar 18, 2011)

Now that *Stairs of Sand *is out and I'm marketing it in all the ways people suggest here on Kindleboards, I have begun to write a historical novel.

The novel is a prequel to Dickens' *A Tale of Two Cities*.

The inspiration for this novel comes from my students' questions over 34 years. Almost all my 11th grade students thought Sydney was a repulsive anti-hero. They thought he was stupid to give his life for the concept of love since he loved Lucie but disliked Charles Darnay.

So I'm writing his prequel, the story of the losses of his youth, and his resulting depressed, alcoholic adulthood.

Here's hoping!


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## Lisa J. Yarde (Jul 15, 2010)

My inspiration comes from a love of history and in particular, the underdog in history, those people who never get a chance to tell their side of the story. The idea of "history being written by the victors" is very true, and I like sifting through the facts to find out more about the other side, their struggle and why they lost. If I write about a particular period, it's almost certain that my protagonist will have had lots of tragedies along the way. My focus is on the courage it takes to make the tough decisions that may not always lead to a happy ending, but instead show the mettle and courage of a person.


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## Miriam Minger (Nov 27, 2010)

lyarde11751 said:


> My inspiration comes from a love of history and in particular, the underdog in history, those people who never get a chance to tell their side of the story.


Very cool to tell the underdog's side of the story.

Hope all of you have a safe and enjoyable Labor Day weekend...and if you have a moment, join in the fun and share what inspired YOUR story.

Miriam Minger


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## Miriam Minger (Nov 27, 2010)

tammieclarkegibbs said:


> One day I was reading a time travel book and right smack dab in the middle of the action a strange question occured to me. I wondered how it was that in every book I read no mention was made of what was going on while the heroine or hero was time traveling. Did noone realize they were gone? Really? Thus general ideas began to percolate.


Love that, Tammie. The inspiration for our books sometimes comes from just wondering...

Time to share, authors. What inspired your book?

Miriam Minger


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## normcowie (Jun 21, 2011)

Like others, my inspiration can come from various places. But one in particular has a more unique creative impetus.  I write a business column, and once I wrote an article where one caveman swindles the first wheel out of another by giving him the first bounced check - yeah, charcoal scribbled on a rubber tree leaf.

Anyway, a lot of the business execs who read the article liked it, so I thought, 'hey, why not write a caveman humor book?" 

And BONK & HEDZ ... A CAVEMAN ... AND WOMAN ... STORY was born.


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## Chris Turner (Jul 23, 2011)

I think it's the off-the-wall, unexpected situations and the reactions that the characters have to the situations that motivated me . . . how the heroes and anti-heroes go about dealing with their messes is something of fascination and a spur for humour for me. It mirrors real-life, and if the author (like myself) can get a laugh out of it, then it's totally worthwhile . . .

see Rogues of Bindar
http://www.amazon.com/Wolfs-head-Rogues-of-Bindar-ebook/dp/B005H7UFWY


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## John Blackport (Jul 18, 2011)

The inspiration for _Raingun_ was the two wars that America has waged over the past decade.

The fact that it's a fantasy novel is very liberating. I don't need to be an expert on religion, oil production, terrorism, the Middle East, or the real-world conditions "on the ground". If I tried that, it would be useless anyway; there are thousands of writers who could tell the real stories better than I can --- the best I can do for them is to just stay out of their way.

I try to make my fantasy hero struggle with the following things:

a) The question of whether, and how, to oppose the actions of the government of a country he loves
b) The question of whether acts of rebellion, aimed at liberating people from tyrannical government, are worth the cost of placing those same people in a more chaotic environment by depriving them the protection of that government
c) The question of how money, religion and politics sometimes interact to cause good and decent people, to seek the ruin and destruction of other good and decent people


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## Debra Purdy Kong (Apr 1, 2009)

Inspiration for my first Alex Bellamy mystery, Taxed to Death, came over 20 years ago, while I was working as a secretary for a firm of chartered accountants. I was already writing short stories back then and wanted to write a mystery because I'd always loved reading them. I was having lunch one day with a bunch of articling students, and we were discussing crime fiction. One of the guys said, "How come no one ever writes about us?" And thus, Alex Bellamy was born: a 26 year-old C.A. working for Revenue Canada Agency who thinks he's all that, until his colleague is murdered. I ended up marrying one of those students and he still supports my writing after all these years...he just wishes I made money at it. Needless to say, he's the one who does my tax return every year.

My second Bellamy novel, Fatal Encryption, came out of a continuing interest in white-collar crime (I have a diploma in criminology). One day, my grandfather said to me "You should write a book about computers". So I did. He passed away before it was published, but I dedicated the novel to him and my grandmother.

The moral of all this, I guess, is that I really pay attention to what people say to me  

Debra


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## Julie Morrigan (Jun 29, 2011)

Great thread!

Mine are often triggered by an image or a voice in my head. For example, my debut novel, Convictions, was conceived when I saw the face of a little girl at a car window as she was being driven away and wondered what it would feel like to be her big sister and to have been responsible for that. And The Loan Arranger, one of the stories in the Gone Bad collection, began as a voice, one with an attitude and belonging to a guy who turned out to be a loan shark.

My forthcoming novel, Heartbreaker, (Cover here http://gonebadonlinestories.blogspot.com/2011/08/heartbreaker-cover.html if you're interested) was triggered by a love of rock and blues, followed by some 'What if ...? questions. Ah, the secrets and lies that were revealed!


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## Miriam Minger (Nov 27, 2010)

Okay, how about this?  What inspired you to write in a particular genre?  

I loved reading historical romances while lying on the beach during summer breaks from college--and decided I would write one, too.  Eight years after graduation, my lusty ode to my Viking/Norwegian heritage, Twin Passions, was published and a new career was born. 

What about you?  

Miriam Minger


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## Dan Ames (Feb 8, 2011)

My new crime novel, DEAD WOOD, came about because of Jeffrey Dahmer.  True story:  one of Dahmer's victims escaped after being drugged.  He found a cop.  The young man was incoherent and appeared drunk.  Dahmer shows up, convinces the cop everything's fine, that his "friend" had too much to drink.  The cop puts the young man in Dahmer's care.  Dahmer took him back to his apartment, killed him, and ate parts of him.  I always wondered what that must have been like for the cop.  And that's where I started with my main character in DEAD WOOD.


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## PhoenixS (Apr 5, 2011)

Wow, Dani, what a guilt trip for that cop. How awful for everyone involved.

The idea for SECTOR C was implanted a few years ago during a conversation with my brother and sister-in-law about whether using_ in vitro _ fertilization and surrogate mothers to repopulate endangered animals was a good idea or not. And was there a way to make money with the technology without exploiting the animals? After that marinated for a while and designer animals such as lygers and tigrons starting popping up more frequently, I began wondering about theories for rewilding extinct animals. The mammoth genome has been mapped, genetic material taken from mice frozen for 12 years has been successfully cloned, and Japanese researchers now say an embryo cloned from frozen mammoth DNA is no more than five years away. Exciting stuff! But cool ideas need a plot wrapped around them.

Thinking about why mammoths and other Ice Age beasties became extinct in the first place, I latched onto the idea of disease, which hasn't been ruled out as a possible cause. But most diseases are either caused by external factors, like viruses and bacteria, or are host-specific, like cancer and diabetes - things that aren't transmissible. I needed something that's not only a genetic disease, but one which is transmissible across species and capable of causing a pandemic.

Luckily (well, luckily for the story anyway!), I found a candidate.

Then I needed a way for a private enterprise to make money off the animals it produced. I figured out a good - if controversial - way for that to happen too.

I did swear in the beginning there would be no romance and no escaping animals a la _Jurassic Park_. Yeah, broke both those vows in the end.


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## par2323 (Nov 22, 2010)

This is easy for my most recent book--BINGOED.  My inspiration is my ninety-year-old Mom and her experiences playing Bingo at her assisted living facility.  Seems she gets so excited playing, that twice now she has passed out and has had to be taken to the hospital in an ambulance.  She's just fine, but her doc says that Bingo is probably just too exciting for her!  

Anyway, I've incorporated her wonderful sense of adventure and curiosity into my new Essie Cobb senior sleuth mystery series.  However, in BINGOED, I have an elderly gentleman pass out when he wins a game of Bingo and Essie, believing something suspicious is afoot, decides to investigate.

Patricia Rockwell


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## AllisonKraft (Sep 13, 2011)

I've been obsessed with the Titanic for most of my life, and always thought it would be fun to write a novel set on board. I also love time travel romances, and vampires, so as crazy as the combination might sound, I decided one day to try mixing them together.

The result - Destined - is a story about a vampire hunter who finds herself sent back in time to the maiden voyage of the Titanic. Unlike most fiction about the ship, I didn't put her in First Class, or even Third: she travels in Second Class. That group gets almost no attention in popular culture, and in my opinion, they're just as fascinating. I surrounded my fictional characters with the ship's actual passengers and researched the hell out of both the voyage and the time period. It was a lot of fun to write, and the reviews so far have been very positive.

My only wish is that I'd published it before Twilight hit and the vampire/paranormal genre exploded so much. (I wrote it in 2001-2002, when the book's setting - 2012 before the time travel - still seemed ages away.) If only I'd known what the future would bring, I wouldn't have let it collect dust on my hard drive for so long. Ah, hindsight.


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## Gone 9/21/18 (Dec 11, 2008)

For my about to be released romance, _Dancing on Coals_, my inspiration was a little like Lisa's. Long ago I read Dee Brown's _Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee_. It changed the way I looked at a lot of things, including shall we call it "conventional" history of the kind I was taught in school (at least they still taught it in those days).

There are pictures in the center of the book and some of those faces intrigued me so much I kept going back to them again and again over these many years. You have to wonder what they felt as their world crashed around them, how they dealt with it when they were finally defeated and forced into lives of imprisonment and abject misery. However, there were two faces that affected me in a different way as a female. You can find both of those faces at this website:

http://hem.passagen.se/tehila/Apache.htm

Scroll down and see first Victorio and then Naiche. Victorio died fighting, but Naiche survived 27 years of imprisonment as a POW. I developed a crush on men long gone, and those faces were the inspiration for _Dancing on Coals._


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## Danielle Kazemi (Apr 2, 2011)

For my series SOLDIERS OF LEGEND, I wrote a short story about a woman who allowed her unborn child to be put through a rogue genetic program. It raised questions about why would she do this and who would want this to happen? I created Alexander. Then I plugged in another name onto my computer and one of the suggested spellings was Hadrian. From there, it just all started clicking. I cut out that short story from the original story though. Maybe one day I will put it in somewhere else.


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## Miriam Minger (Nov 27, 2010)

So many cool revelations of the inspiration behind your books.  

C'mon, let's hear some more!  

Miriam Minger


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## Cliff Ball (Apr 10, 2010)

Let's see the inspiration for my books....

*Out of Time* - I'm into time travel, having been influenced by such classics as Back to the Future  Anyway, I was watching the 1997 Titanic movie while it was in theaters, and thought it would be cool if time travelers saved the Titanic, which is just a chapter in the novella. Well, it went from there, and I included references to Roswell 1947, Anne Frank, JFK, Apollo 13, etc. In this novella, time is fluid (hadn't even heard of Timeline by Crichton when I thought of it), so the main character discovers that everything exists at the same time, and so the government has him interfere. I included a bad guy of sorts, I made J. Edgar Hoover a guy from even further in the future. Where that was inspired from, was when Geraldo opened Capone's Vault and didn't find anything. I thought that it would be cool if Hoover knew where all the skeleton's in everyone's closets actually were.

*Don't Mess With Earth* - I wrote this as a short story originally for the Writer's of the Future contest. My inspiration for it was what-if famous people in our past were actually from an advanced civilization of humans (Terrans) who had left Earth when a huge flood happened, and some returned to help out humanity. I give reasons for Amelia Earhart's disappearance, and why we advanced so quickly in technology in the space of 50 years. *Shattered Earth* is slightly the same novel, but with a different scenario for why the Terrans left Earth, more fleshed out story for them, and a completely different ending with 25k more words.

*The Usurper* - I had this idea in the mid-1990's, but I started writing this in the middle of 2008, then I put it away a couple of times until late 2009. Originally, it started with the protagonist trying to survive living under a socialistic dictator who becomes President of the United States, and how he joins a resistance to bring down the President. Then, when conspiracy theories about our current President, when he was still a candidate began showing up as I was writing the original draft (not born in US, a communist spy), I figured I would incorporate all of those, make the story about the Soviets bringing the US down from within through the political system using a Manchurian Candidate type person, and he brings down the US with the help of terrorists. The protagonist still does what he's supposed to do, but as some have said, the ending is a bit of a twist.


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## E.W. Saloka (Aug 21, 2011)

My husband and children are huge fantasy fans and I love fairy tales. I think of movies like Enchanted, Edward Scissorhands, Legend. Willow, and Everafter to name only a few.  The stories we tell our children, watching their eyes light up as they listen to every word. That was the book we wanted to write. They were our inspiration to write our fantasy book, actually their story, because each one is a character in our book.
I don't know what I'll write in the future but this one was for them.


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## Miriam Minger (Nov 27, 2010)

E.W. Saloka said:


> My husband and children are huge fantasy fans and I love fairy tales. I think of movies like Enchanted, Edward Scissorhands, Legend. Willow, and Everafter to name only a few. The stories we tell our children, watching their eyes light up as they listen to every word. That was the book we wanted to write. They were our inspiration to write our fantasy book, actually their story, because each one is a character in our book.
> I don't know what I'll write in the future but this one was for them.


Love that, making your children characters in your fantasy book! 

Authors, this is the place to share the inspiration behind your books--and believe me, readers love to know what's behind their favorite stories. Dive in, the water's fine!

Miriam Minger


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## cecilia_writer (Dec 28, 2010)

What a great thread - these inspiration stories are fascinating.
I was 'inspired' to write 'Crime in the Community' by being on a local committee - when I had written the original first chapter it seemed terribly boring (as indeed the real committee was) so then I threw in every weird thing I could think of to make it more interesting.
'Reunited in Death', although a sequel, is more of a conventional cosy mystery - it was inspired by a family history event that really happened in my mother's family, but without the murders. Jemima's mother's family is based on my grandmother's birth family of 11 children who scattered to all corners of the earth when they grew up.


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## Marie S (May 20, 2011)

FROZEN IN TIME
I've always loved vampires and Greek mythology, so I combined the two and wrote about a male vampire from Ancient Greece. There are also many other elements and threads in the story, like the afterlife and reincarnation, which have always intrigued me. I wanted to explore the idea of what happens to the soul after we die, and if we were suddenly given immortality (like becoming a vampire) how would it feel? I also love history and have chosen to set my future books (this novel is the first of a series) in other eras that fascinate me. 

AGE OF DREAMS
I grew up in the 1980s and wanted to be a singer, so I guess this might be a sort of autobiographical tale. But it's a novel I just had to write as it had been in my mind for years.


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## TerryS (Mar 29, 2011)

Being a fantasy lover, my inspiration came from the many other fantasy writers and the world they created. How those worlds could take me away from whatever issues I had in my youth. eventually, my own world and its people formed in my mind and many a day I lived there.


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## Ian Fraser (Mar 8, 2011)

My 'From Hell' saga emerged, I suppose from various Robert Heinlein books - where characters swapped their genders. It occurred to me that writing something epic in scope and with tongue firmly in cheek dealing with the issue of sexual identity, especially in the often sexist world of Fantasy, could be a funny experience. It was 

My 'Depths of Deception' came from a single image of a dead icily-frozen family standing smiling in a snow storm, and a central character talking with them happily. I began writing, and slowly the 'why' and 'how' of it all began appearing on the page. (The story unfolds in flashback and flash-forward).

My 'Flies for the Mayans' I guess also comes from Heinlein, in the novel (Job: A Comedy of Justice) where he looks at Heaven - although my vision is far more brutal than anything he (I think) would have been comfortable writing.


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## Jena H (Oct 2, 2011)

The inspiration for my novel came from a good old-fashioned daydream.  I dreamed up a corny, cheesy, romantic scene and mentally perfected it.  Then I thought, why not put it on paper so I don't forget it?  Once it was on paper, it looked a little... lonely... all by itself, like a small island in an ocean.  So I wrote up a scenario about what led up to this scene.  And then I wrote what happened after it, and just kept writing.

(As far as my next book, which I haven't made available yet, it's what came next after "Nobody's Perfect."  But it's not a sequel and contains none of the same characters.)


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## Miriam Minger (Nov 27, 2010)

DDark said:


> My inspiration came from a failure. I attempted to write a novel a couple of years ago and it was so horrible I tucked it away in a folder. The problem was, one of the characters I couldn't get out of my head. He basically walked in, took a chair and made himself at home. Time passed and I made another go at a fresh idea and wrote this guy write into my book. Except he wasn't the same Breed he was in the previous book, nor did he have the same personality. I could argue it wasn't the same guy, but it was. He was just underdeveloped. The idea for what my characters are came from the villains in the failure book and what they could do.
> 
> So, my inspiration came from a book that ended up in the virtual waste basket. Not very glamorous.


Why not inspiration from failure? Inspiration takes all forms. Tell us yours for your novel.

Miriam Minger


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## PatrickWalts (Jul 22, 2011)

Darkness, death, decay and desolation...


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## VDouglas (May 15, 2011)

As I say in my teaser - Magic, myth and mummies - what's not to love? I've always been interested in ancient Egypt, it's culture, Gods and myths. Who doesn't really? And then there were the movies. In most of them, the bad guy is mummified alive, against his will. From that came the 'what if', what if it wasn't involuntary? And why? That's the opening scene to both Heart of the Gods and Servant of the Gods...


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## Connie Chastain (Jun 25, 2011)

The inspiration for two of my novels was the Duke lacrosse scandal. The first was Sweet Southern Boys (still being written), which I interrupted to write the prequel, Southern Man.  I remember reading an article about Reid Seligmann (can't remember where I found it) wherein he said when he saw himself on television news as the accused, "I can't tell you what that did to me inside." I wanted to explore what a false accusation that becomes a very public scandal does inside to the falsely accused and how it affects those close to him.

There are two themes, or perhaps thematic elements, that show up in a lot of what I write, regardless of plot/story.  One of them is perception vs. reality, and the form that takes in Southern Man is how the protagonist and his family life are viewed by outsiders, as opposed to how they really are.  

Another thematic element is the difficulty some people have letting go of guilt and accepting forgiveness/redemption.  That also plays a part in Southern Man but is much more related to the plot of Storm Surge. It is about a consumer watchdog who goes undercover working for an independent adjuster suspected of insurance fraud. She becomes convinced of his innocence and integrity and abandons her mission. When they fall in love, she fears telling him about the deception by which she got her job because she fears she will lose him. When he finds out and overcomes his initial anger and forgives her (he doesn't want to lose her, either) she finds it very difficult to let go of her guilt and accept his forgiveness.


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## Miriam Minger (Nov 27, 2010)

Inspiration...from darkness and desolation to magic and mummies!  

It's almost Halloween.  C'mon and shock us with the inspiration behind YOUR book.  

Miriam Minger


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## Steve Vernon (Feb 18, 2011)

The inspiration for my novella PLAGUE MONKEY SPAM - (featured in my collection THE WEIRD ONES) - came from a fascination with spam e-mails. I kept getting these e-mails talking about all of the millions that were parked in bank accounts all over the world and how all I had to do to claim them was to send these perfect strangers my bank account info, Social Insurance Number, credit card stubs and birth certificate to my first born.

Who is writing these e-mails, I wondered. Why are they coming to me?

From there I stepped into a story that would seek to answer that question that all authors have to put up with hearing - "Where do you get your ideas?"

The two notions morphed together into an Anansi tale from Hell's deepest sub-sub-sub-basement.


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## dggass (Apr 3, 2011)

For me, Ghosts of Arlington was inspired by the mental health issues of returning soldiers and veterans of previous wars.


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## Faith (Jan 5, 2011)

For my books I had different inspirations. My first novel, The Crossing was based on a true story of love and courage. Once I had passed my science degree I realised I had the dedication and stamina to sit and write and FINISH that first book.

The 2nd novel, The Assassins' Village was set on the island of Cyprus where I live for most of the year. I loved the history of the place and the inhabitants are fascinating with some odd habits. Murder, mystery and suspense went hand in hand in the village where I was living a the time.

Children of The Plantation, is set in Malaysia where I spent part of my childhood - an exotic setting for more mystery and suspense.

My current WIP, started as a romance - but I got bored and started adding some chilling little parts and this has turned the story into another suspense and full-blown murder .


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## AnitaBartholomew (Jun 27, 2011)

In 1999, I bought a house in Sarasota, Florida, that, according to an unverified local legend, was built for midgets who performed in the Ringling Bros. Barnum & Bailey Circus. Neighbors hinted that the house might be haunted, which seemed absurd, at first. After a few odd occurrences—the doors I locked upon leaving were hanging wide open on my return; and my cat, Murphy, seemed to interact with someone who wasn’t there—I began to dig for answers about the house’s history.

I questioned historians, circus experts and local circus people, and searched rare old books about midget villages, sideshows, and carnivals for clues to the house’s origins. Although still a mystery, my imaginings about the house's origins as I searched formed the basis for The Midget's House.

Anita Bartholomew


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## Miriam Minger (Nov 27, 2010)

Hey, it's a long holiday weekend.  Snuggle up with your tablet or laptop and share with all of us the inspiration behind YOUR book!  Readers DO want to know...and so do other authors.  It's cool stuff at the heart of who we are and why we write.  

Miriam Minger


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## AlisaC (Oct 12, 2011)

AnitaBartholomew said:


> In 1999, I bought a house in Sarasota, Florida, that, according to an unverified local legend, was built for midgets who performed in the Ringling Bros. Barnum & Bailey Circus.


I'm so glad you posted this! I always wondered about your title when I saw it on the boards. Now that I've read this, I'm going to buy it (getting a Kindle for Xmas -- yea!).

I'm working on a book about immortality -- if you could be immortal, would you want to be? I know the idea came from losing my father to lung cancer a few years ago. Got me thinking about life and death and when living isn't any fun any more.

Wow, what a downer after the midget house post.


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## soesposito (Jun 12, 2010)

AnitaBartholomew said:


> I questioned historians, circus experts and local circus people, and searched rare old books about midget villages, sideshows, and carnivals for clues to the house's origins. Although still a mystery, my imaginings about the house's origins as I searched formed the basis for The Midget's House.
> 
> Anita Bartholomew


Anita, I'm your neighbor in Venice. The circus has such a rich history here, doesn't it? Your book sounds great, putting it on my tbr list!

My cozy mystery, KARMA'S A BITCH (A Pet Psychic Mystery) was inspired by my conversations with people I met at the dog park and my visit to St. Pete. I totally fell under the spell of this city and the idea of a pet psychic mystery solidified as I walked the streets there. My poor husband was so patient as I sat down at a cafe table and sketched it all out on their napkins


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## William G. Jones (Sep 6, 2011)

When I first started work on DRIVING TO BELAIR, I was living in a campus-housing apartment, a furnished concrete-block grotto built in the late '50s and last updated in the '70s (maybe early '80s). My dad had restored a '56 Chevy about four years ago, and was finishing up work on my '57 Chevy, but I was hours away and couldn't see it or drive it.

I'd just started business school and with the exception of a few people who were married with families, I was the oldest student in the program. I had my trusty laptop and a fold-out couch that was about as comfortable as the back seat of an old Camaro and nothing much to do on the weekends.

A friend of mine had been urging me to pursue screenwriting, so somehow I came up with the idea of a big-city professional going back to his rural roots for his father's funeral and finding an immaculately restored '56 Chevy waiting there with a request that his father's ashes be scattered in the ocean. 

The last screenplay I'd attempted before that was a story about four college frat boys who got a house together after college and tried to keep up the whole frat-house lifestyle into their mid-twenties. I liked the dynamics of the relationships in that story and decided to bring some of those dynamics into DRIVING TO BELAIR in the form of brothers. Instead of three, I pared it down to two.

I'd just been dumped, so that's probably where the whole ex-fiance aspect came from.

Anyway, I finished that screenplay about a year after I graduated, and earlier this year, I used that screenplay as an outline for my novella. I'd blown my back out and spent about two months before surgery and three months after writing the novella. Somewhere along the way, a little toy poodle came into my life by way of an ex girlfriend and that's how the poodle ended up in the story--I loved him so much I just felt like he'd make a perfect addition to the road-trip.


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## Miriam Minger (Nov 27, 2010)

Fascinating tales of inspiration!  Would love to hear more...

Miriam Minger


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## George Berger (Aug 7, 2011)

I think I related both parts of this somewhere else, once, but it's a good cautionary tale...

One day in the spring of 2010, I was trawling the internet, reading something - probably an anime news website. I wound up over at a certain website that hosts fan translations of Japanese light novels. There, I downloaded the translation of some novel or another (yes, yes, I'm a bad person) and read it.

It was a fairly famous novel. Sold around a million copies or something, in Japanese; was made into an anime series or at least a video or two. Might have had a computer game based on it. Lots and lots of rabid fans, and so on.

It _stank_.

I mean, even overlooking the obvious translation issues, the premise was nonsensical, the plot was hackneyed, the dialogue was ridiculous, there was no foreshadowing, new characters appeared out of nowhere for no reason to muddle up what little plot there was, and it ended, apparently, more because the author had hit his or her page count than because the story had reached any real conclusion.

Even as a free pirate translation, it'd been downloaded several thousand times.

"Cheese and rice," I said to myself. "Self, _I_ could write a better book than this."

And I did. Well, I _tried_. I think we all know how that turned out. I probably did write an objectively better book, at least on technical merits. That, alas, doesn't count for much of anything. Seventeen months later, I've still sold less than 50 copies, and lost around $300 _on that book_. Let's not go into how badly the other stuff I've written has done.

Anyway, *not having learned my lesson*, some time later I was browsing Smashwords late at night, and came across a newly-published... rape fantasy. A violent one, with not a lot of redeeming literary qualities. But, I said, bitterly, it'll probably outsell my novel at least ten-to-one. (This would probably prove to be one of the few times in life that I've been right, ironically.) It was squicky and kind of horrible in many different ways, but, well, Rule 34, and all that. There's probably a market for that. So I set out and I dashed off - completely missing the point, _obviously_ - a less-horrifying, less-violent story about, y'know, rape. Or at least a rapist. Complete with a plot, and all that kind of absolutely unnecessary cruft.

It didn't sell _well_, but it was actually my best-selling title for around six months straight, until the people who are into that kind of thing presumably discovered that it's not actually rape-y erotica _at all_ but a adventure-ish comedy of errors about incompetence, stupidity, and familial violence, doh.

Anyway, learn from my fail, folks: "I can do better than than" is a *terrible* reason to write a book. At least if you suck. Or want people to actually buy it.


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## soofy (Nov 26, 2011)

Several ideas inspired me to write Drawn Breath.

If there were advancements in the human being whether physical or mental, would they be used immediately for warfare or to hostile ends?

How would one spark an insurrection in a militaristic fiefdom through guerrilla tactics? I am inspired by war treatises like the Art of War and Hagakure.

After reading books like Blood Meridian and Hagakure I wanted to write about the idea of morality and conscience in war or a bellicose environment and if they really exist in that setting?

I'm also fascinated by the mind and the ways in which it changes whether it is psychosis, obsessiveness, paranoia, schizophrenia, sociopathy etc. In fact my favourite films/books involve some focus on mental health: Fight Club, The Sopranos, Memento, Blood Meridian, One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, Amores Perros, Taxi Driver, Akira, Black Swan. I find it adds a dark and intriguing tone to a book/film and is always quite moving.  I strive to include some of that focus in my book/books.


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## kellymcclymer (Apr 22, 2010)

Good question, Miriam! Every one has a different story. For my latest, Blood Angel, I was inspired by having two sons in high school at the same time as the high school shooting epidemic was at its height (at least, I hope it was). We've all done something we regret, but what if that something was so horrible that there was no redemption possible?

My historical romance series was inspired by the work of Katherine Woodiwiss and Anya Seton (an odd mix, but there you go), with a touch of fairy tale heroines (after a decade of conversation about why Cinderella, Snow White and Rapunzel would even want to marry princes 

Kelly


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## Sharon Austin (Oct 13, 2010)

I love the characters so much in Smoke on the Water I stretched the story out to make the Hellfire Trilogy (Book Two: Fire Flicks, Book Three: Ashes of Vengeance).

Still loving these people, I featured a few of them in Killing Summer.

Killing Summer was inspired by a true story.

About to join a writers forum, I tried to think up a clever line to introduce myself. The first thought that came to me was: Hi. My name is Sharon. I am a serial quiller (I was knee-deep into the Hellfire trilogy). Instead of joining the forum I started writing Serial Quiller.


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## ElisabethGFoley (Nov 20, 2011)

Inspiration for short stories comes from all over the place - sometimes the ideas are so small or so quick that I can't remember afterwards where they came from. But the title story in my book, "The Ranch Next Door," had a kind of interesting story behind it. I'm a big fan of the classic Western singing group the Sons of the Pioneers. Their primary songwriter Bob Nolan (author of standards like "Tumbling Tumbleweeds" and "Cool Water") wrote a number of songs that are considered "lost" because because no sheet music or written lyrics have survived - they were either never written down (he never learned to read or write music) or destroyed in a 1948 fire. When I read a list of the titles one day, "The Ranch Next Door" caught my imagination, and having no idea what the original song was about, I started thinking what kind of a story might go with that title...and had one written before I knew it.


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## teashopgirl (Dec 8, 2011)

The inspiration for NOTES TO SELF was the 2009 Facebook meme 25 Things About Me. Remember that? Did you or someone you know participate?


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## AshMP (Dec 30, 2009)

When I 13, my mother was diagnosed with breast cancer.  This was still back in the somewhat dark ages of modern medicine and she was given a 20% chance of survival.  

Being that I was 13, my mom and I were able to do a lot of talking.  She was able to tell me about love and life and what her hopes were for me.  On the other hand, my sister was 8.  She was just to young to grasp the lessons.  But that time with my mom -- it was collecting and gathering.  I took a lot of her wisdom and put it away for a later time when I would need it ... I benefitted, but my sister was just way to young.  

A year and half later, my mom want into remission.  But, when you've walked the tightrope your parents mortality, you can't go back to thinking they'll live forever and always be around.  

The Milestone Tapes is sort of my exploration of that.  What happens when a parent dies leaving behind a young child?  It's based on my sister and mother ... what could have been, had things been different ... and the strength that the love between a mother and child really does have.


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## Seanathin23 (Jul 24, 2011)

The Long Night, started life as a mod for Neverwinter Nights back when that game came out in 02. It was just the basic shell of the story that kept rattling around in my head.  When Dragon Age came out in 09 I wanted to give games another shot. So that summer, I started putting together my story, building back story for the world and all the people what would make up the PC's party.  I had the whole thing mapped out, and just to get my brain pumping I wrote the first few chapters of the book to get a feel for the world. 

I sat all that aside played the game and read A Song of Ice and Fire. In January of 2010 I was trying to pick back up my ten year old sci-fi book that I had abandoned, because I wanted to get back into writing novels. I just couldn't find the voice again for the hardcore military sci-fi, but dark fantasy was front and center in my brain. So I picked back up those few chapters and the two legal pads filled with outlines and bios, and set to work on The Long Night. 

As for the thrillers I'm writing now most those ideas start with a story that I saw at work. When we do something interesting I just file it away, and almost any day that I go out and shoot with a reporter I come back with the major elements of a story sometimes new sometimes one I was struggling with.


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## Alan Simon (Jul 2, 2010)

The idea for THE FIRST CHRISTMAS OF THE WAR came to me during the holiday season of 2001, a couple months after 9/11. I had a close call on 9/11 (except for a schedule quirk I would have been on United Flight 93) and was still feeling pretty depressed and shell-shocked. On December 7th, 2001 I was watching on TV the ceremony commemorating the 60th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor, and one Admiral who was speaking was comparing that day and the upcoming holiday season to that of 60 years ago. It got me thinking and the idea of writing about the Christmastime, 1941, in the immediate aftermath of Pearl Harbor and amidst all the terrible war news that month, took hold. I wrote the book in parallel with UNFINISHED BUSINESS over the next 2-3 years, edited and revised both for another year or two, and then after not finding an agent to represent either decided to self-publish them last year.


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## Miriam Minger (Nov 27, 2010)

Absolutely amazing tales of inspiration.  Where's yours?


Miriam Minger


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## RachelHowzell (Nov 4, 2010)

NOBODY KNOWS YOU'RE HERE is about an investigative journalist who has been writing articles about the serial murders of black prostitutes in South Los Angeles, and the murders become increasingly close to her as the Phantom Slayer begins stalking her.  

The story is inspired by the real Grim Sleeper case in Los Angeles which is still unresolved as a suspect awaits trial.  As I wrote, I wanted to make a statement about how the murders of the poor and disenfranchised are ignored by police and the media.


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## Miriam Minger (Nov 27, 2010)

I hope everyone is having a wonderful holiday season!  As you can see, lots of folks have read this thread and many have contributed the inspiration behind their books.  Where's yours?

Miriam Minger


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## Rachel Forde (Nov 4, 2011)

I'll answer this in two parts:

The character of Nara-Ya/Ayuma has been with me since I was twelve, when I used to skip recess and sneak into my school's computer lab to write stories, as my family didn't own a computer in 1996 (And also, there were bullies on the playground, and my Asperger's Syndrome made me Soft Target #1). The plot of _Lastborn_ has existed in its current form since 2001, when it was a typical epic fantasy modeled off the first Lord of the Rings movie that was pretty hot back then.

Eventually, I thought: "Eh, this has been done hundreds of times by hundreds of other authors. What would happen if Tolkien didn't hate industrialization so much, and technology of Middle Earth advanced to the Victorian Era? And what would happen if they discovered the New World?" So it took on a more Victorian, American feel. This is why I classify it as Epic Fantasy, rather than Steampunk. I didn't even know Steampunk was a thing until a couple of years ago.

That's part one. Part two I think I summed up pretty well in this guest post:

http://www.thefairytalenerd.com/2011/09/giveaway-guest-blogger-rachel-forde.html.


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## jumbojohnny (Dec 25, 2011)

For my, or rather our (my daughter was co-author) footy/spy tale, it was my deep interest in the days of the empire as well as all things British at the time, and all its foibles and contradictions and inconsistencies, as well as of course, the class war. The odd thing is, as the book developed, these things did not play a particularly central part, although present in some degree of course, but it gave the tale its framework, it allowed it to roll along as it did. It's odd how that happens sometimes, you think you are going to be doing something rather formulaic - an aristocratic family sitting down to roast partridge while the proletariat are starving and freezing, you begin writing, and of course, as you do, you end up with a tale about professional football and a couple of spies chasing each other over the country.


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## Kevis Hendrickson (Feb 28, 2009)

Rawhr!!!


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## Steve Vernon (Feb 18, 2011)

> I saw the sneaker again today.
> 
> Cast off, with its eyelets glinting blindly in the sunshine. A dirty pink tongue poked out. One frayed lace snaked from the left upper eyelet like a pointless question mark. A single frayed oak leaf, dead since last autumn, fluttered against the decaying cotton walls of the shoe.
> 
> She's still following me.


 - excerpt from my short story "Lost Sole"

The inspiration behind my story "Lost Sole" (collected in ROADSIDE GHOSTS) was a small pink running shoe lying on a cold sidewalk while the rain cried down upon it. I looked at that lonely shoe and I wondered to myself just where had it come from? What had brought it to this sidewalk? Had it walked here? Had it been knocked off of the foot of some little girl in the street?

Where had this shoe come from?

So I sat down and wrote this story to satisfy my curiosity.


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## Doug Moore (Dec 19, 2011)

It’s simple. The inspiration I mean.
My dreams have always been quite vivid and have been since early childhood. In one of my earliest recurring dreams I was living in a survivor colony in Antarctica after a nuclear war. Don’t tell Disney but penguins were the chicken in our diet.  Usually my dreams were quite brutal with fragmented visions of being suffocated or gruesome murders of friends and family.
Relax! Not by me. I was either the karate kid in my dreams or that paranoid little *ucker hiding in the corner or running down some darkened road where the street lamps die as I pass. I never saw my would-be killer but then again maybe that fear of the unknown was greater than anything my dreams could conjure up.
As I grew older my dreams became more sporadic but one such dream became the basis for my novel ‘Playing God’. It was different and whole and as clear as a piece of Swarovski crystal. Never before had my dreams been so linear. From perched atop my pillow I could envision the beginning, the end and even some of the filler.
This subject is precisely what I used to introduce myself as I am new to this site. Anyone interested in the more detailed tale of my book’s inception can read in full in the Book Bazaar by keying in ‘Into the Light/My Journey to publishing my first eBook.


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## JoJo Gould (Jul 11, 2011)

When I was a toddler I (apparently) dragged a blue teddy bear everywhere around with me.

At school, everyone was into 'Star Wars' but I was a 'Planet of the Apes' man. So, I guess that deep in my subsconscious the early seeds were sown for me to write books about a future Planet Earth run by bears.


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## Ian Fraser (Mar 8, 2011)

The inspiration for my 'Flies for the Mayans' novella came after I started a grumpy blog from the perspective of God. 

After the first blog, it dawned on me rapidly that I had the makings for an interesting story, seeing as most of the narrative was kind of 'writing itself.'

Instead of a regular blog about the problems of a God in Heaven trying to keep control of his territory (much like a variant of Tony Soprano), I decided to sit down and just write the story itself, first-person. Let the Creator's anger, fears, and angst come out, and along the way, have a lot of fun tearing into various religion's ideas of an Afterlife: make delicious satire, in other words.

That's how 'Flies for the Mayans' was born. Judging from the reviews its received, it definitely seems to hit home with readers.


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## Miriam Minger (Nov 27, 2010)

Hmm, I think alot of writers have vivid dreams.  I know I do--in color, too!  

I hope everyone has a Happy New Year!  Thanks so much for your participation in this thread and for sharing the inspiration behind your books.  Always love to hear more, so join in the fun and thrill us, scare us, entertain us and/or simply enlighten us with the inspiration behind YOUR book.  

Miriam Minger


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## CollinKelley (Sep 1, 2011)

I wanted to share some of my inspirations for my brand new mystery/suspense novel, Remain In Light (which is out now in eBook format and will be available in paperback mid-January). Remain In Light is the second book in The Venus Trilogy, preceded by Conquering Venus. I'm working on the outline for the third novel now. My goal with this trilogy was to write each book so that it could stand alone, yet connect a larger story and characters together.

The story that links the trilogy is this: In 1968, Irène Laureux's husband was murdered during the Paris riots and his body dumped near Notre-Dame cathedral. Thirty years later, she finally catches up with his killer. With the help of American writer Martin Paige, Irène will illuminate decades of secrets and lies only to discover that her husband's death is part of something far more sinister.

As a writer, I'm influenced by books, films and music that I love. The spirit of Lewis Carroll, Marcel Proust, Henry James, Virginia Woolf, Carl Jung and good old Agatha Christie are alive and well in my novels. There's gumshoe detectives, a hint of the paranormal, Jung's theory of synchronicity and wayward Americans who discover that  Paris has a dangerous underworld that most tourists never see.

If you're a music fan, you'll probably notice that chapters in both Remain In Light and Conquering Venus are named after some of my favorite songs. The music of Miles Davis, Kate Bush, Vanessa Daou, Massive Attack, Samuel Barber and Bjork was constantly playing while I was writing.

The trilogy has a purposeful cinematic quality because I've been greatly influenced by directors like Alfred Hitchcock, Wim Wenders, Krzysztof Kieslowski, Sally Potter, Louis Malle, Jane Campion, Francois Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard. If you love those old black and white New Wave films, mixed with an edge of danger and menace, chances are you'll get into The Venus Trilogy.


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## Shiromi (Jul 5, 2011)

What a great idea! Gosh, I get my ideas truly from everywhere, dreams, something I read, visions, and I often dwell on them, sometimes for years before I put anything on paper.

The Huntsman's Tale came to me as this fully formed idea, this man's voice telling this terribly lonely, sad story. Unfortunately, that was during nanowrimo so I had to keep it on the back burner for a while.

Becca came as sort of a vision. I saw Becca, this single woman on a space craft far away from anyone. It took a long while to really discover who she was and what her story was.

The story I'm writing right now, The Long Night was an idea that came to me when I couldn't sleep. I think I was getting ready for an early morning flight and I couldn't sleep, and I had this idea of what it would be like the night before a battle. The story has changed drastically since the idea originally came to me but it still has that scene of a warrior trying to get some rest.


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## Curtis Hox (Nov 24, 2011)

Miriam Minger said:


> Hi fellow authors! I thought it would be fun for readers to know the inspiration behind your novels.
> So tell us. What was your inspiration?


BLEEDOVER's a novel that blends intellectual subject matter with popular genre tropes in an examination of what narrative is and how we consume it. I wanted a story that pits literary sensibilities vs. the stuff of pulp fiction and popular culture. This emerges as a battle between the protagonist Dr. Hattie Sterling and an old book club member, Corbin Lyell. Hattie's a professor with an attitude who thinks she knows how to explain (and control) bleedover events seeping into reality. The conflict focuses on how Corbin counters her, and her response. He believes that the sword-and-sorcery fiction of R.E. Howard and the science horror of H.P. Lovecraft is just as important as the serious literature she champions. I threw in a few fun pulp fiction tropes like a sword-wielding barbarian, a demon-thing and monstrosities from deep space, even a red-goddess. These, I hope, are handled in an original fashion that avoids the clichés and contrived mechanisms we've all seen a million times. In the end, I tried to write a smart novel with all the fun stuff I liked as a kid.

I know Bleedover takes risks in alienating readers who expect more standard contemporary fantasy, but the slow build is worth the pay off in the end when Hattie and Corbin duel.


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## Miriam Minger (Nov 27, 2010)

One week already into the New Year and I know all of you are out there conjuring up all kinds of cool stories!  So...let us in on the inspiration behind your short story/novella/novel.  Dare you.

Miriam Minger


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## brianbigel (Jan 7, 2012)

For "Get The Job" my inspiration was multiple ones. 
1. My Sons who are 20 years old and seem to need a lot of help finding jobs so I wrote a book a help them out a bit, gave them paperback copies for Christmas. Charlie, when I talked to him the other day, said he's getting some good ideas from the book for his present job hunt to replace a part time job. Since this is the main reason I wrote the book it made me feel really good.

2. Since the book is about me in my job hunts it was good to remember and write it all down for all time. I now have in one book most of the techniques that I used for finding jobs the last few years. Really, it's also helped me to write my blog a bit better which is a good thing since I'll be turning a number of the postings into another book about job hunting.

3. I wanted to help others find jobs which resonates well with some of my altruistic notions. I'm hoping that many of the free Kindle copies will help some to be able to find jobs though of course it would nice to sell quite a few copies too.


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## Iain Edward Henn (Jan 29, 2011)

Initial inspiration for my mystery novel, The Delta Chain, came from a newspaper article about the body of a man found floating in a local bay. He'd been in the water for more than a day. A month later his body had still not been identified and he had not been reported missing. Who was he? How could no-one - _no-one_ - have noticed he was missing?

I researched the subject and found there were many similar cases around the world. Like anyone, I wondered who they once were, what had happened to them, and why no-one missed them. The "what-if?" side of my brain kicked into action.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004INHROC/ref=s9_simh_gw_p351_d0_g351_i1?pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=center-4&pf_rd_r=1AWNP5BZ97NSSREHNY67&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=470939031&pf_rd_i=507846


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## Miriam Minger (Nov 27, 2010)

Shiromi said:


> Gosh, I get my ideas truly from everywhere, dreams, something I read, visions, and I often dwell on them, sometimes for years before I put anything on paper.


Anyone else store up the inspiration for their stories for years before striking out to write?

Miriam Minger


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## Mark Fassett (Aug 25, 2010)

Inspiration for me is mostly the need to write something. The last two novels (one is not out yet) both came about because of workshops. 

The first, Questioner's Shadow, came about after I spent an evening trying to come up with the most powerful opening I could. I needed to have something to work on for a workshop with Dave Farland, so I combined the opening with an idea I had for writing something that was a mix of Jack the Ripper and Beowulf.

The second, I was staring up at the ceiling while lying in my bed at the Anchor Inn in Lincoln City, OR. I was at a marketing workshop and had to come up with yet another story idea for a synopsis. We had to come up with a new idea every day for six days.

There are few (if any) things that I write where I could point out a specific inspiration. I can't even think of something in the real world that made me think "I need to go write a story about that".


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## jumbojohnny (Dec 25, 2011)

I am surprised we can all have a gab about our stuff on here, as we usually cannot post more than once on any one title, but, hey ho.

The inspiration for Mike Miller, Son of Pendragon were the pre - Rowling magic books which put the centre of power in magical schools and colleges (ah, how many knew there were similar but only moderately successful books in this genre years before HP? Not too many, I know, but some will know and perhaps some will have read them.) I thought, as the wannabees no doubt thought in the Cavern in '62, 'I want to do that'.

The Old Man's Trousers. Oddly enough, this is mainly inspired by big Uncy Vern' from HP, in tandem with three men in a boat, and some daft short-lived tv comedy featuring two upper-class bumblers who did nothing but fret as to what they could wear at the next seasonal gathering at the various regattas, manor house parties, shooting parties and the like. My story is nothing like those, but the bare bones provided the central character and his mannerisms.

The Happy Harold Stories. The ultimate inspiration were the over-sentimental twee internet funnies or sometimes rants about life for kids now as opposed to years ago. You know, they use the image of a spotty oik in danger of developing Diabetes before he's 20, sitting at his PC, then flash back to life in the fields in the shires, kids fishing, building dens, rabbiting with their dogs. So this gave me for the idea of my own Just William type character - Happy Harold.

The Marble. I have always been taken by the idea of short stories, each standing on their own, but with a common and perhaps even just a tenuous link, but a link nonetheless, and this gave me the idea to make a kid's marble as the link between all of the stories - or chapters, although this was expanded a tad to also have a recurring human character.

Ghosting in on the Blind Side. Two facets of British life in the good old days of empire have always fascinated me. The spartan men playing football in all weathers on the worst pitches you can imagine, and the empirical / military attitudes which prevailed, complete with plummy accents and senior civil servants there more because they have a double-barrelled surname than their admin' or even intelligence skills. I had the idea to bring the two together in a footy and spy adventure.

Words. This is more to do with either when I am ancient, or gone, and future generations of the family opening a dusty old box in an attic, opening the book, and them saying 'Old John wrote poetry and stuff? Wow!' (Well, let's hope they go wow, it may be the post-apocalyptic era and they're looking for emergency fuel.)


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## Jean E (Aug 29, 2011)

Where does my inspiration come from? I wish I knew, I'd spend more time there. Though I have a lot of writing under my belt, articles, letters, etc. It was only recently that I sat down to write a book.

I did not take that chair with an outline already in my head. But what I did bring to the table was a style. That was a good start. I spent a few moments staring at my laptop, then all of a sudden the first two words were there, _Eloueese Turtlewine_. For the next few minutes Eloueese Turtlewine introduced herself to me. I learner of her strange objection to Tuesdays and I learned that she was a very tidy person. But then we were interupted as a she noticed a tiny piece of yellowy paper float into her garden.

For me the story built from that point. I almost felt as if I were following the characters through the tale. But the guiding principle I did manage to impose was that of community. My single idea as I took my seat was that whatever happened everyone would pull together. I suppose what I am saying is that the process inspires me.

I found it impossible to fathom what might happen next while I was away from the keyboard. I had to be there, engaged, living the thing. It was great.


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## Claudine Gueh (Jan 9, 2012)

My Clearest Me is inspired by my experience as an insecure introvert during childhood and adolescence. 

I was often unsure about 

1) how I ought to be;
2) or if others had found me too quiet;
3) I didn't realize I could pursue BIG dreams either.


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## Miriam Minger (Nov 27, 2010)

Jean E said:


> Where does my inspiration come from? I wish I knew, I'd spend more time there.


I love that! Hey everyone, Happy February!

So get deep with us and share what inspired YOUR book.

Miriam Minger


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## Guest (Feb 3, 2012)

The initial inspiration for the world of Crystal Shade? There are many answers for this. My usual official statement is; the character and the basic world was born from a "whisper in my mind". As some said jokingly, maybe an angel whispered her own forgotten story. However I won't confirm or deny this.  It's a different type of fantasy and not a "I'm so serious archangel Michael, I'm the greatest warrior, Raphael, God vs. Satan's war X trillion, fallen angels come to love virgin woman, etc, etc...", but a completely different, yet believable story and strange new, yet somehow familiar world which may serve also as a fairy tale for young ones. The reason why people used to ask what the inspiration behind Crystal Shade is, as many part of it is sometimes too believable and detailed, just as our world. So as they said. And the main character is also close to a real, believable character. However there are many tiny secrets in that book, such as why the eight's chapter in the first book is called 888 instead of 8 (And many of these strange things got into this book accidentally, even I haven't realized their meaning until a later time. However each part has a real meaning as I look back at them. But I don't have a clue where those parts came from.). So the inspiration and the details of this book is strange and a mystery, sometimes even to me. However winged Gracie's origin is a secret, but not to me. 

As for Pale Moonlight. That's an easy one. I love noir, I love the 30s and I wanted to open a window to this era. Few months ago I've found a site with plenty old photos when I've made a tiny research about New York and the 1930s and that research, those details turned to a funny little novelette (People who was born and lived in New York said I've made a pretty good research job regarding NY and that era as their grandfather had told the very same about those times.).


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## wraylewis (Jan 1, 2012)

When I retired, I decided to learn more about computer generated images. That led me to Pose and DAZ Studio, which led me to some wonderful characters from a German artist who calls himself Nursoda at Renderosity.com.

I fell in love with these little guys, and, as I created a world for them, they started to tell me stories.

So, I wrote my first Nusodian Tale - Kelm's Revenge, with a bunch of these illustrations.

Within the week, number two - Teo's Big Deal, will go up on Amazon.

Thanks Frank! [Frank van Reuschen ([email protected]) is the artist who created these lovely creatures]


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## Miriam Minger (Nov 27, 2010)

wraylewis said:


> When I retired, I decided to learn more about computer generated images. That led me to Pose and DAZ Studio, which led me to some wonderful characters from a German artist who calls himself Nursoda at Renderosity.com. I fell in love with these little guys, and, as I created a world for them, they started to tell me stories.


Characters telling you their stories. I can relate to that! I love it when you're writing a book and you think it's going one way and then the characters decide to take it into another direction. Who else but a writer would understand this phenomenon.

Any more tales of inspiration?

Miriam Minger


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## Liz Davis (Dec 10, 2011)

You can read about the inspiration behind Tangi's Teardrops here: http://novel-moments.blogspot.com/2012/02/true-story-behind-tangis-teardrops.html


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## xandy3 (Jun 13, 2010)

My new short story Daddy's Little Girl was inspired by actual current events, and my outrage at how the Criminal Justice system handled it.  I was being my usual big mouthed, smart alec self over the subject for the past few years...
The defenders of a certain athlete keep telling me to shut up about it,...as a matter of fact even those who agreed with me were telling me to just shut up about it. 

So I decided the best way to express my thoughts and feelings on the matter would be through creative writing, and to create a totally fictional story on the subject.


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## TommyJCharles (Dec 23, 2011)

Thirst came about because I was wondering what would happen to society if aliens came down, but then did nothing. If they just stayed in their ship. How quickly would society fall, and what would happen to our civilization? Would we simply destroy ourselves? Would the aliens actually have to do anything at all? 

Then I wondered how a teenage girl would deal with all of this, and how she would deal if she learned that she was the sole hope for humanity.


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## Miriam Minger (Nov 27, 2010)

CollinKelley said:


> If you're a music fan, you'll probably notice that chapters in both Remain In Light and Conquering Venus are named after some of my favorite songs. The music of Miles Davis, Kate Bush, Vanessa Daou, Massive Attack, Samuel Barber and Bjork was constantly playing while I was writing.


Anyone else inspired by music? Voodoo Chile by Jimi Hendrix was the inspiration for my medieval Ireland historical romance, WILD ANGEL...yup, Voodoo Chile. When I closed my eyes and listened to the sheer exhilaration of that song, I could see a band of rebel Irishmen crashing through the woods on horseback after a successful raid against the invading Normans. Amazing.

Miriam Minger


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## DolphinWatcher (Feb 20, 2012)

The inspiration for writing my wild dolphin watching guide came from a captive bottlenose dolphin I met many years ago. Being young and naive, I signed up for a "dolphin encounter" program with the hope of getting close to the animals I loved. 

It just didn't feel right. The pool was small and the dolphin's dorsal fin was bent to one side. I later learned this bending is due to the animal not being able to swim in a straight line for any distance.  I vowed to only watch dolphins in the wild and on their terms. I thought others might like to know where they could do the same.


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## AndreSanThomas (Jan 31, 2012)

For my first Realm of Janos book, (Ielle) there were two things that come together at the same time.  One was that in my critique group I was starting every critique with "this isn't my genre but..."  It seemed that everything coming through was paranormal, sci fi, etc.  I thought it would be nice to challenge myself on that.  At the same time, the theme for that month was announced as sci-fi.  Seemed meant to be.

For the second book, one of my beta readers was totally in love with a character in the first book- Bylar.  I decided to go on and write more of Bylar's story for her, hence the book Ovia.

For Driven, I took a character from another book I wrote (as yet unpublished) and decided to tell his story.  

For all of them, I've got a great buddy that provides me a lot of inspiration and he always helps me find pictures of actors/actresses/celebrities, etc. to 'cast' as characters.  That's really helpful because sometimes you're drawn to a look, or a character they've played or something about what we know about their personality, etc.  Then you can also change them, make them older, younger, change the hair, eyes, cast them against type, whatever.  Gives you a nice starting point.


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## balaspa (Dec 27, 2009)

Gosh, it varies from book to book for me.  Sometimes it just comes in a flash.  For my thriller, After the Snowfall, I was out walking my dog and suddenly had a clear vision of snow-buried street with three men walking down the middle of the road.  My novel The Dead Phone came to me when I saw an old phone and it made me think of an old Twilight Zone episode.  Sin-Eater was created when I tried to create a comic book character with unique abilities that I hadn't seen in a comic before.  I never know when the inspiration will hit or from where. Sometimes I hear a story on the news, sometimes it just happens and I don't know why.


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## Miriam Minger (Nov 27, 2010)

balaspa said:


> I never know when the inspiration will hit or from where. Sometimes I hear a story on the news, sometimes it just happens and I don't know why.


And that's the beauty and the magic and the mystery of it all.

Miriam Minger


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## Kali.Amanda (Apr 30, 2011)

The inspiration for my books turns out to be rooted in the very personal. For my novel, Justified, the inspiration was a spectacularly bad week at work and sharing horror stories with colleagues about bad bosses. Putting May to Rest is based on a personal experience that was fictionalized only to protect the guilty. The cookbooks are based on things I make and love eating. The other two are journal entries.

The second crime novel I am writing now is not inspired on anything personal, though I based the villain on a man I knew in passing. The steampunk series that I started last year? I have no idea where that came from, it created itself and I am just transcribing the adventure...


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## TexasGirl (Dec 21, 2011)

Baby Dust was quite certainly inspired by

Casey Shay (died at 20 weeks gestation)
Daniel (died at 4 weeks gestation)
Emma Hope (died at 10 weeks gestation, but her twin sister survived and is now 9 years old)


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## Alex Owens (Mar 24, 2011)

I'm a huge devour-er of paranormal, with an emphasis on the Fanged-ones, but more and more I've found it harder to identify with the protags. They're all so young and unencumbered. _Where are all the women like me, thirty-something, with husbands and children and responsibilities that can just be shrugged off at the first sign of pearly-whites?_

And from that, my soon-to-be-released novel KILL Me was born.


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## NUTRIWINE (Feb 28, 2012)

Well for me it was to save lives. When you come to know a 1 billion dollar drug is outperformed by moderate wine 
drinking and Champagne is good for depression how much more inspiration could one ask for ha ha ha ha ha
Especially when 80 million people in the USA enjoy wine and have yet to know the health benefits.


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## Miriam Minger (Nov 27, 2010)

Happy St. Patrick's Day, everyone!  

And yes, I can see wine inspiring many a fine story.    Chocolate, too.

Miriam Minger


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## Phyllis Lily Jules (Dec 5, 2011)

My book came about through the intersection of four major pushes:
  
  The terrible lives some children have that can't be changed because they can't tell in a way that we can or will hear.
  The love of children and animals that can heal and transform.
  My lifelong perception of ghosts and other hidden realities.
  My inner selves that insistently remind me there is a different way to live.

Oh, and my notorious grandfather who has much to teach us about power, ambition, and what humanity truly is and is not.


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## Miriam Minger (Nov 27, 2010)

I dare you.  Show us what you've got.  Tell us what inspired YOUR book.

Miriam Minger


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## JacksonJones (Feb 20, 2012)

Most of my stories are inspired by the government and/or people behaving badly. Those two things are often the same thing.


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## Miriam Minger (Nov 27, 2010)

Anyone ever inspired to write by weather?

Miriam Minger


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## KA Poe (Apr 2, 2012)

The book I just had published was inspired by a dream that I had. After waking up, I kept refreshing the memory in my mind so as to not lose the idea before I could get to my computer. After writing it out, I began to develop a story and eventually had more dreams that inspired further parts of the story - so I thank my unconscious imagination for a lot of my book 

My other series randomly came to me, as most of my writing does. I am seldom inspired by anything to write, I just sit down and the words spew from my fingertips.


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## KMenozzi (Jan 8, 2012)

This is a fascinating thread - it's intriguing to see how many different ways inspiration finds us.

_Ask Me if I'm Happy _came about as a result of my move to Italy. On a visit to the US, I found myself incredibly homesick for my new home (and, naturally, for my husband who stays in Italy while I visit the US for up to three months in the summer). In the midst of this homesickness I watched a travel program about Bologna, and the interviews with English-speaking Italians from that city made me miss my students at the language school.

I had a dream that night and woke up to write what I thought would be a short story, inspired by one of my favorite cities (Bologna) and the people within it.

Then I remembered I can't write short to save my life. 

My current WiP was inspired - initially - by the sniping and politics within team Astana at the 2009 Tour de France (Contador vs Armstrong), as well as Fabian Cancellara's legs. (I was on the phone with my husband when Cancellara was awarded the first maillot jaune of that Tour. Without thinking, I said exactly what was on my mind: "I want to lick his legs." My husband's response? "If you can catch him, go right ahead." I love my hubby for that. He _gets _me, ya know?  )

Now the WiP is nearly finished and I'm getting ideas for the next novels, but I don't want to jinx them yet!


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## theaatkinson (Sep 22, 2010)

I love this thread. I'm always sure there's something behind a writer's words even if the veil is a thick one. I actually blogged about a time that inspired my novel Secret Language of Crows a few months ago.

http://theaatkinson.wordpress.com/2011/07/17/secret-lives-of-brothers-and-sisters/


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## granuk (Oct 8, 2011)

Hi Miriam,
Thank you for the opportunity to share my inspiration behind YA Fantasy ''Unparallel Worlds''.
One day I visited a bookstore with my fourteen years old niece. She was looking for a new fantasy book to read. The shelves were full of books written about mythical beings.  She mentioned that it would be a nice change if someone could try to introduce the almost lost genre of otherworldly fantasy fiction  This happened about the same time I had changed jobs to one which was not so demanding, so all of a sudden I had spare time on my hands. It was then that I decided I would use this time to write a book for her age group that was completely different to anything else out there. The result is Unparallel Worlds.  

Thank you for reading the post. 
Alisa


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## Donna White Glaser (Jan 12, 2011)

The inspiration for the first book I wrote came from a single thought: Could someone use a murder victim's AA Fourth Step list (the infamous list of resentments) to track down a killer. I wrote that book. It's actually become the third in the Letty Whittaker 12 Step Mystery series. It finaled in the Malice Domestic/St. Marten's first novel contest so that gave me a huge boost of confidence. I also started learning more about the business side of writing mysteries and realized that if I wanted to write a series, I would need a central theme. Obviously, the 12 Steps of AA came to mind.

So back to the desk, I went. The first book in the series, THE ENEMY WE KNOW, is now out and available in print and ebook. I'm bearing down hard to get the second ready for readers. The third has been waiting a long time, but after some revision tweaks will be ready to upload too. 

And then... I have an idea for a new series. Can't wait to get started on that one too!


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## Miriam Minger (Nov 27, 2010)

KMenozzi said:


> This is a fascinating thread - it's intriguing to see how many different ways inspiration finds us.


It IS a fascinating thread. Join us...

Miriam Minger


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## KMenozzi (Jan 8, 2012)

Miriam Minger said:


> It IS a fascinating thread. Join us...
> 
> Miriam Minger


For some reason, I heard that in my head like "One of us... You are one of us...!"


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## William Meikle (Apr 19, 2010)

Why I wrote NIGHT OF THE WENDIGO

Since I moved from Scotland to Newfoundland I've developed a love/hate relationship with cold weather. Part of me finds it fascinatingly beautiful, and I'm often in awe of the force and majesty of the winter storms that sweep this island from January till April. But another part of me pines for warm, sultry days in the sun.

Back in the winter of 2007/8, a particularly harsh one in these parts, I started to have a germ of a story idea. At that stage I only knew I wanted to do an "ancient evil comes back for revenge" tale, and I wanted to trash a big city in print. (This was before I wrote CRUSTACEANS, and I hadn't tried anything on this scale before.) That it would involve weather extremes was a no-brainer, given that, at the time I had the idea, we had three feet of snow on the ground here.

I started with no real plan beyond an opening scene where archaeologists uncover an old boat on a cargo dock in Manhattan. Pretty quickly a cast of characters started to squabble for my attention; cops, forensic teams, other archaeologists and a conspiracy nut. Somehow they all fitted in to the same story, and I had to step back for a while to outline a plot.

Four hundred years ago a Scottish cargo ship fell prey to a Wendigo at an early settlement on the Hudson River. Now a team of archaeologists have uncovered the boat, and let loose the evil. Manhattan is soon overrun by an ice storm like no other before it. There are things moving in the storm. Blue, cold things, with razor sharp teeth.

The characters never stopped squabbling, but the main character, the winter storm itself, rode roughshod over them, and it was the force of the storm that drove the story forward in my head.

It runs in my mind like any number of big dumb disaster movies, with its theme of chaos and destruction coming to modern Manhattan, with antecedents in the Emmerlich and Devlin blockbusters 2012, The Day After Tomorrow, and even Godzilla.

I'd love to be able to sit down with my popcorn and beer and watch it for myself on a big screen. It's a dream I have.


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## BRONZEAGE (Jun 25, 2011)

_Are there readers here in the WC? _

--Several things coalesced and inspired _Bending The Boyne_.

First, fragments from the earliest Irish myth, for having many astronomy references and for referring to the great Boyne passage mounds ( now a UN World Heritage site) as "elfmounds." What a piece of propaganda! Elfmounds, they _ain't_.

Second, reading fairly dry and lengthy tomes in archaeology showed that Something Happened At 2200 BCE along the north Atlantic. A new presence, with long bronze knives and new pottery and new boats. Violence. Abandonment of the mounds and most probably the belief system that built those mounds. While living in lovely Eire, I invested in travel and picked up 200,000 airmiles looking at megalith sites for years. That was fun.

Third, the eminent Barry Cunliffe, former head of European archaeology at Oxford, agreed with me. It doesn't get any better than that.

Why else would one be nutters enough to tackle a novel set at 2200 BCE?

Epilogue: the result had nibbles from agents and Big Houses but it wasn't dumbed down enough for their market, frankly.


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## Lee Lopez (Jan 19, 2012)

My inspiration came from career. As a retired cop, I had a incident where I came across one of my criminals, that use to threaten to kill me with every arrest. Before I retired I had a case against him that sent him back to prison again. He threatened to wipe my gene pool off the face of the earth. So there I am with my grandkids in the car, happily retired, and he walks across the street and looks right into my car, with my gene pool in the backseat eating ice cream! I had on a ball cap and sunglasses, and it's been over 6 yrs since I've dealt with him, so he just looked and looked away. 
My story is based on that moment of fear and 'the what if' he was a former stalker. The 'what if' went further, when I called my husband and he questioned if it was really him...The whole story is based on the fear I experience with my grandkids in the backseat, and my husband questioning whether it was really him or not. It's about the doubt, and finding someone to believe.


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## DRMarvello (Dec 3, 2011)

Over the years, I've become bored with high-stakes fantasy. I've been avoiding "hero must save the world" stories for a while now, and have come to prefer stories that revolve around a personal or local conflict. When I sat down to write my fantasy series, that preference was in the back of my mind.

I love exploring a fantasy world through its characters and their experiences. As I started reading more indie authors, I was thrilled by the way they stretch the fantasy genre with elements of other genres. I realized that I too could write a story that included elements of all the genres I'm interested in, those being mainly swords & sorcery, mysteries, and thrillers.

As for the story and the story world, I started with things I knew. The story is set in an alternate Pacific Northwest, which is where I live. The main character Jaylan started off as a younger version of me, but he morphed into his own person the more I developed out his background. The same thing happened with the main character's love interest: she started off as a younger version of my wife. I'm a software developer by trade, and the magic system evolved from a line of thought that started with, "What if magic spells were effectively software programs?"

The first book focuses on a personal challenge for the main character, although his decisions throughout the series place him in the middle of a larger conflict. Still, the challenge is not the classic, "I don't want to save the universe, but I'm the only person who can." The conflict is just large enough to engage a variety of supporting characters with competing agendas.


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## Louis Shalako (Apr 13, 2011)

For 'The Handbag's Tale,' I really wanted to pay a kind of homage to a French detective story that I read when I was quite young. The only problem is that I can't remember the title or author, and probably never will. But what I remembered was the feel of the book. It really was a different world, a different culture, a different attitude. I rememebr another book like that--about some boy who grew up in Paris but went into the country for the summers. Once again, that feel of another time and place came through, (and of course I can't remember the author.)
This story came in at about 12,000 words because I wrote it to submit it as a short story. There aren't that many mystery markets out there, and so I ended up publishing it myself. Why it ended up as a parody or a kind of satire, with a fair degree of spontaneity to it, I really couldn't say.


```
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B004OL2XJW
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## Miriam Minger (Nov 27, 2010)

A very cool dream to see one's story on the big screen.  

Love all the tales of inspiration on this thread!  So c'mon.  Inspire us!

Miriam Minger


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## William Meikle (Apr 19, 2010)

My latest is THE CREEPING KELP (see sig below)

It's kelp. It creeps. 

It's a cautionary tale of what man is doing to the environment. A WW2 experiment resurfaces; a Shoggoth fragment meets some bits of jellyfish and some seaweed and together they decide they like plastic. They like it so much that they start to seek it out, and grow, and spread... and build.

It's a homage to several things. There's more than a touch of Lovecraft obviously, given that I've appropriated the Shoggoths, but there's also a lot of John Whyndham in there. I wanted to do a big-scale, Britain-in-peril novel for a while. The title came to me one day and I knew immediately that there was a story to be told there. There's also a bit of QUATERMASS in there too -- the old "British scientists screw up" genre has been with me for a long time and it's also something else I've always wanted to do. Here it is.

I started my fandom of the disaster genre young and at first it was from a Science Fiction perspective. The British ones from the '50s and 60's got my attention, in particular John Wyndham's DAY OF THE TRIFFIDS and THE CHRYSALIDS. Them, and A CANTICLE FOR LIEBOWITZ were my earliest introductions to the form. After that came tales of cosmic disaster, mainly Lieber's THE WANDERER and Niven and Pournelle's LUCIFER'S HAMMER. My interest was further piqued by Terry Nation's TV show THE SURVIVORS, and Stephen King's THE STAND, the first to being real horror to the genre IMHO. But my favorite in the genre is by Robert Macammon. His SWAN SONG is a roller coaster blockbuster which eschew's King's religious trappings for non-stop action and gritty realism mixed with a slug of the supernatural. My kind of tale.

I grew up on a West of Scotland council estate in a town where you were either unemployed or working in the steelworks, and sometimes both. Many of the townspeople led hard, miserable lifes of quiet, and sometimes not so quiet desperation. My Granddad was housebound, and a voracious reader. I got the habit from him, and through him I discovered the Pan Books of Horror and Lovecraft, but I also discovered westerns, science fiction, war novels and the likes of Mickey Spillane, Ed McBain, Alistair MacLean, Dennis Wheatley, Nigel Tranter, Arthur C Clarke and Isaac Asimov. When you mix all that together with DC Comics, Tarzan, Gerry Anderson and Dr Who then, later on, Hammer and Universal movies on the BBC, you can see how the pulp became embedded in my psyche.

If I had to describe my writing style in five words, it would be these: Entertaining, pulpy, fast-paced, old-school fun.

The kick-ass cover Wayne Miller did echoes all those sentiments.


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## Miriam Minger (Nov 27, 2010)

Love to hear the inspiration behind your writing, William.  Anyone else?  

Miriam Minger


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## William Meikle (Apr 19, 2010)

Here's another

*About Crustaceans*

Big beasties fascinate me.

Some of that fascination stems from early film viewing. I remember being taken to the cinema to see The Blob. I couldn't have been more than seven or eight, and it scared the crap out of me. The original incarnation of Kong has been with me since around the same time. Similarly, I remember the BBC showing re-runs of classic creature features late on Friday nights, and THEM! in particular left a mark on my psyche. I've also got a Biological Sciences degree, and even while watching said movies, I'm usually trying to figure out how the creature would actually work in nature -- what would it eat? How would it procreate? What effect would it have on the environment around it?

On top of that, I have an interest in cryptozoology, of creatures that live just out of sight of humankind, and of the myriad possibilities that nature, and man's dabbling with it, can throw up.

Then there's Guy N Smith, who the book is dedicated to. Guy's killer crabs are remorseless, relentless and the kind of killing machine you can't help but love.

All those things were going round in my head when I first sat down to write the short novel Crustaceans.



> If you are a monster kid like I am you will absolutely love "Crustaceans", if you are not a monster kid reading "Crustaceans" will probably turn you into one, either way read "Crustaceans" it will probably be the most fun you ever had reading a book and I give it my highest recommendation. -- FAMOUS MONSTERS OF FILMLAND
> 
> Fans of the old creature feature movies and killer animal books will find it to be a wonderful guilty pleasure. Recommended. -- THE MONSTER LIBRARIAN


As I started I only knew one or two things -- that there would be whales involved somewhere, and that the Crabs would be in the tunnels and sewers under the city. After some fascinating research into the history of excavations and tunneling I made a start.

I worked out a full ecological profile and lifecycle for my "beasts" but most of that went by the board as the plot took over. It went quickly, and I found myself enjoying it immensely. It runs in my head like a movie, and I'd love to see it on the big screen one day, or as a comic book. That's how I think of it -- big, brash and bloody.

It's definitely horror, but it's also Science-fiction, in a very 1950's B-Movie kind of way, a creature-feature if you like. It runs in my head like one of those lurid early technicolor monster movies, and readers will have fun thinking of it that way themselves.

Back to Guy N Smith again. This book began life as a possible collaboration with Guy which, for several reasons, didn't pan out. But the Crabs are all his, and without his original books, this one would never exist. (Indeed there are a few allusions in the book to the originals, a wee homage on my part.) I'd just like to thank Guy, for the inspiration and, more than that, for the fun he's given us in his books over his years of writing.


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## Maud Muller (Aug 10, 2010)

My first novel, _The Neocon Conspiracy_, is a futuristic political thriller inspired by George H. W. Bush. Deeply concerned by the direction he was taking the country, the only thing I could think of to do in protest was write a novel. Although fiction, far too much of what I predicted has come true, although I really didn't want to be right.

_Confessions of a Liberal Love,_, the humorous tale of a women and a wisecracking statue of gargoyle was a lot more fun to write than _The Neocon Conspiracy_. The inspiration came from reading too many romance novels as a teenager, my slightly left-leaning political views and the whimsical statue of a gargoyle whose picture is posted below. If you take a good look, you'll see that the homely little fellow has an open book in his lap and he's dabbing at his eye with a handkerchief. The statue is called "Happy Ending" and is the work of a very talented artist from Prince Edward Island. 









Reviewers and others who have read the book (both conservatives and liberals) say it's funny from beginning to end as well as thought provoking. You can read all of the book's reviews by clicking on the cover in my signature line or visiting my website at http://emmuller.net My favorite is the 5 teacup one written by Kylie at Happily Ever After Reviews in which she writes: _With a sassy and smart heroine, and a gargoyle that's part fairy godmother and part Jiminy Cricket, Confessions of a Liberal Lover is the perfect book for any girl who ever felt overshadowed by a sibling, misunderstood by a parent, or turned herself inside out for a guy. _


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## Miriam Minger (Nov 27, 2010)

Hope you have a wonderful Mother's Day weekend!  

Authors are readers and readers are authors.  Share what inspired your novel...and inspire us to buy it!

Miriam Minger


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## Guest (May 11, 2012)

I lived some of it, observed it through others, my first book is based on mostly true events while my second one that I'm 15k words into is pure fiction.


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## pulsemyne (May 7, 2012)

My book (the Tower falling) is based on a number of things. It maybe a sci fi book taking place several thousand years in the future but it's actually based on the geo-political situation of the world today. It's also partly based on my experiences as a longtime player of the videogame Eve Online. A game whose players can be obnoxious, rude, racist, homophobic and yet also Kind,caring, sharing, loyal to a fault and very good people. It's a weird world and yet in itself a sort of mini version of society across the world (littered with extremes however). 
The books title is a metaphor. It's not actually about a tower falling (and yet one does fall and millions die early on). The tower falling refers to something else entirely. The same is true of the horrible alien race called the Imrams. The name is a deliberate attempt to make people associate them with Islam. That is another red herring though. It appeals to some of associations we make in society. It takes the idea of some peoples bigoted views and twists them on its head. 
The whole book is about the morality of the decisions we make and the decisions the main character has to make. It's made to question yourself.

Be that as it may it is also a comedy of sorts so it's not too serious!


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## MT Berlyn (Mar 27, 2012)

My book was inspired by the moon reflecting on the river.  By the time I reached my back screen door on that particular evening, I knew the story from beginning to end.  Although the manuscript was not completed for five years, I never lost track of the rhythm.  That never happened before or since.  With other books, I struggled in crucial places, but it was as though this particular tale was already set.  It was very strange.


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## otterific (Jan 31, 2012)

The inspiration behind my books is the beauty of Yellowstone National Park. My Yellowstone Romance Series is set against the backdrop of the geysers, hotsprings, rivers, and mountains of the most beautiful place on earth, as nature intended it hundreds of years ago. I draw from the rich history of the area - from the mountain men to those who worked hard to create our nation's first national park, and weave my fictional romances around some of those historic events.

From some of the reader reviews, I think I've succeeded in capturing this magical place in the pages of my books:

"Having never been to Yellowstone Park, I could see it very clearly through the eyes of this author as she described it to me, not only from Amiee's current view (the past) but of how she remembered it from the future. It was genius."

"Instead of what might have been a "silly love story", "Yellowstone Heart Song" draws the reader in from the first page to the last, with great story line, characters and intimate knowledge of Yellowstone."

"Ms. Henderson has sent me on a mental vacation to Yellowstone! Her writing is so descriptive that I felt as if I were in Montana. I loved how she described the changes to Yellowstone National Park, and how she blended the past and present time."

"The Yellowstone setting made this especially appealing. The author obviously has a love for that spot and it shines through in the manuscript."


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## Louis Shalako (Apr 13, 2011)

'Heaven Is Too Far Away,' was written in response to the jingoistic, patriotic glorification of war, and especially the use of WW I history to justify and excuse modern social conditions here in Canada.

'Core Values,' was written to draw attention to the long-term effects of high levels of toxic chemicals in the environment.

'The Case of the Curious Killers,' was written because of Star Trek TNG's lack of realism, (like when they lose power but not the ship's artificial gravity,) and even more so the fact that all problems were solved by a benevolent authority, hierarchical in nature. In reality, this could never be based on anything other than wealth, some esoteric pseudo-religion, and massive poverty at the lower levels of society.

'The Shape-Shifters,' was written because of people's remarkable ability to judge a situation based on an extremely limited number of facts.

"Redemption: an Inspector Gilles Maintenon mystery,' was a tribute or homage to Georges Simenon and the 'Maigret' series of detective novels, and in some ways to deal with grief, loss and some regrets of my own.

'On the Nature of the Gods,' was written for fun, but also to push people's buttons a little bit regarding human sexuality, and the superficialities that blind us to the faults within ourselves... 

All of the books, it should go without saying, are fun books to read. I have other stories, and other reasons, as well.


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## adammjohnson (Dec 5, 2011)

During a trying semester in college I decided one night that I wanted to write a fairy tale, just as a means of release. My book was the result.


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## Miriam Minger (Nov 27, 2010)

Thayer Berlyn said:


> My book was inspired by the moon reflecting on the river. By the time I reached my back screen door on that particular evening, I knew the story from beginning to end. Although the manuscript was not completed for five years, I never lost track of the rhythm. That never happened before or since. With other books, I struggled in crucial places, but it was as though this particular tale was already set. It was very strange.


Inspiration can be strange and mysterious...and never ceases to intrigue me. The inspiration for my romantic suspense RIPPED APART came from a familiar-to-many verse in the Bible that haunted me:

A voice was heard in Ramah,
wailing and loud lamentation,
Rachel weeping for her children;
she refused to be consoled,
because they are no more.

Matthew 2:18

Then came the premise for RIPPED APART...how far a mother might go in her terrible grief for her child by abducting another woman's child. Chilling.

Miriam Minger


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## joeyjoejoejr (Apr 19, 2012)

The Body is inspired by the movie Heathers and a dream I had when I was younger about a dead body that was in our front yard, and my parents told me to go move it into the neighbors yard.
The Remington was inspired by an old typewriter that my great grandmother left me.
My upcoming book meme was inspired by too many zombie movies and too much time on the internet.


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## cshenold (May 6, 2010)

Privy to Murder is the result of living in a tiny Texas town for twenty years and watching the people around me, combined with my love of murder mysteries, and the paranormal. So, I write cozy paranormal mysteries with a single mother, psychic who has two children, a murder in the outhouse and a spectral visitor. Fun stuff.


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## Pat Chiles (Dec 24, 2011)

_Perigee_ was inspired by the first civilian space flight (SpaceShip One) and passenger spaceline (Virgin Galactic). I've been in the aviation business for a long time and am an incorrigible space geek, so the two naturally went together.

Virgin's eventual goal is to offer point-to-point suborbital travel service. That is, think New York-Tokyo in two hours. Through space. At 8,000 mph. Yeah, I'd pay for that ride.

But my day job is to plan for how we'd deal with worst-case scenarios, like an inflight fire or losing an engine over the middle of the ocean. Or...a suborbital spaceplane ending up trapped in orbit, which it wasn't really meant for. And by the way, there's only a few day's worth of air and even less power.

Not to mention this doesn't appear to have happened by accident.

What now, Mr. flight director?


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## HJHampson (Mar 17, 2012)

My forthcoming novel (June11th), The Vanity Game is a satire of celebrity culture, so a lot of inspiration came from reading all the trashy celeb mags that my friend used to buy. It's a about a footballer though, so I would pin point the key inspirational moment as the 2006 World Cup when there was a total media circus around the England team and their wives and girlfriends. I read how a Guardian reporter witnessed a tabloid photographer trip over in a rush to get a picture of the goal keeper's father eating his lunch.  The whole thing was just so laughable I had to turn it into satire.


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## pamclaughton (Feb 21, 2011)

My upcoming novel, TRUST, was inspired by a forensic evidence class I took about ten years ago and a real life case from the 70's where three teenagers confessed to a murder they didn't commit. It showed how police coerced them into confessing and I was fascinated by the fact that by browbeating and denying basic needs like food, water, even bathroom breaks, that people would break down like that. That case was a groundbreaking one which changed the way police were allowed to interrogate suspects.

I thought about that class and case for a long time and kept wondering 'what if?'  What if a young woman was one of several teens whose confessions were tossed out of court because they were deemed 'false confessions', and what if the real murderer was never found?  Flash forward 15 years to a new murder where this young girl is now a woman about to get married, and suddenly finds herself a 'person of interest' when a similar crime is committed. A key question TRUST focuses on is, "How well do you really know the people you love, and what they are capable of?"


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## David Callinan (Oct 10, 2011)

Good to talk about this. Inspiration isn't always obvious. It is usually buried in your psyche and pops up when you least expect it. Personal experience lay behind spiritual thriller 'An Angel On My Shoulder'; 'Knife Edge' evolved from a screenplay and 'The Immortality Plot' from my love of dark thrillers. At heart, it has always been deep reading, life experience and allowing my mind to freefall.


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## Miriam Minger (Nov 27, 2010)

I like that . . . inspiration isn't always obvious.  

So what lies buried deep behind your book?

Miriam Minger


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## 60169 (May 18, 2012)

Actually, Stephen King is the source of my current WIP.  In the early 90's, I bought King's Nightmares and Dreamscapes.  As I was reading it, I discovered his story called "You Know They've Got a Hell of a Band."  As I started reading it, I started "imagining" the story ahead of him.  Not surprisingly, he went in a totally different direction, which included horror.  Not a big surprise, I know.

I was surprised to find that after I finished it, a very different, much sweeter story had been born in my brain, complete. 

Aside from having dead rock n roll stars as secondary characters, it luckily has nothing to do with his story.

My first completed book came from falling in love at an early age, losing her, and only finding her again by accident 30 years later.  She and I are in our HEA, so I guess that book must be a romance.


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## Simon Haynes (Mar 14, 2011)

I do a fair number of school visits to talk about writing and the life of an author. Until recently all my titles were adult science fiction, while the kids I was talking to were roughly 9-12 year olds. I'd go along, get them all enthusiastic and then explain why my books probably weren't in their school library.

So, I decided to start a new junior science fiction series, and it's been a real blast.


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## Miriam Minger (Nov 27, 2010)

Would love to read more tales of inspiration behind your books...and readers DO want to know.  Inspiration is ever fascinating, so join in the fun!

Miriam Minger


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## R. M. Reed (Nov 11, 2009)

At the risk of you guys calling the men in white coats to come and get me, I will tell you that Mama haunted me for years. I saw her in the period just before sleep. Not often, but she came back quite a few times over twenty years. I knew that she hurt people, and when I asked why, she said, "That's what you're for." I finally got her into a book about two years ago and she seems happy with that, she hasn't appeared in my dreams or almost-asleep state since then.


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## writingundertheinfluence (Apr 18, 2012)

My book was inspired by an attempt to deal with my own fears.


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## Jill James (May 8, 2011)

My book, Divorce, Interrupted was inspired by my e-publisher not taking stories about divorced couples so I decided to indie pub and see if it sold. I liked the idea that a marriage can die and sometimes be resurrected.


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## cshenold (May 6, 2010)

My coming soon book, Bloody Murder, was inspired by small town Texas, my love for urban fantasy and pageant moms everywhere who push their kids, even when the prize is only one tiny trophy and no money. Murders take place during the county fair beauty and talent shows.  It continues where Privy to Murder leaves off and adds in a vampire and witch.


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## DidEverythingButThink (Jun 25, 2012)

My book "Did Everything But Think: D.E.B.T." was inspired by this sad economy we live in and thousands of conversations with customers as a debt counselor. I really believe debt is the killer of dreams and freedom. If more people are able to overcome debt; this country will be much stronger. I don't care who is in the white house. This is a problem we must fix.


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## Guest (Jun 25, 2012)

R. M. Reed said:


> I will tell you that Mama haunted me for years.


Quick thought: Mama looks like she haunts the drive-thru of Krispy kreme on that book cover, how's she going to kill anyone if people can just outrun her?

Haha, sorry, that's what went through my mind right now.


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## Rebekah (Oct 9, 2009)

HOPE FOR JOY is loosely based on the collective accounts from family and friends who have been victims to domestic violence.

The opening scene is inspired by an event that transpired when I was a teaching assistant.  Going from tutoring individuals and small groups to teaching an entire class of college freshmen was not an easy transition for me. 

The idea of using Joy's essay as a cry for help is also based somewhat in reality from my experiences as a teaching assistant.


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## Miriam Minger (Nov 27, 2010)

R. M. Reed said:


> At the risk of you guys calling the men in white coats to come and get me, I will tell you that Mama haunted me for years. I saw her in the period just before sleep. Not often, but she came back quite a few times over twenty years. I knew that she hurt people, and when I asked why, she said, "That's what you're for." I finally got her into a book about two years ago and she seems happy with that, she hasn't appeared in my dreams or almost-asleep state since then.


I think we've all been haunted by someone or something in our lives! And that's the beauty of writing--that we can exorcise these ghosts and maybe even knock someone off fiction-wise if the mood strikes us. 

Keep your tales of inspiration coming...

Miriam Minger


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## Miriam Minger (Nov 27, 2010)

I hope you're enjoying the Labor Day holiday!

Readers love to read the inspiration behind a book--so why not share yours?  Shock us, thrill us, make us pause to think, move us . . . 

Miriam Minger


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## PatrickWalts (Jul 22, 2011)

I wrote a blog post about the meaning behind my latest book. A bit lengthy to copy and paste(seems obnoxious to take up an entire page in a thread)so here's the link!
http://patrickwalts.wordpress.com/2012/08/12/my-new-novel-is-available-now/


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## joeyjoejoejr (Apr 19, 2012)

For "Meme" I had a song stuck in my head one day (can't remember which song, probably something by Journey) and thought "What if something could get stuck in your head and make you go insane?  And what if it was contagious because you would sing/chant it out loud?"


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## PatrickWalts (Jul 22, 2011)

joeyjoejoejr said:


> For "Meme" I had a song stuck in my head one day (can't remember which song, probably something by Journey) and thought "What if something could get stuck in your head and make you go insane? And what if it was contagious because you would sing/chant it out loud?"


That's a cool premise. And a catchy title, too. Or very relevant, at least.


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## Ilyria Moon (May 14, 2011)

My WIP, Headliner is inspired by the true life of a wayward rockstar friend of mine and the Journey song, Don't Stop Believing.


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## chrisstevenson (Aug 10, 2012)

In _The War Gate_, I really wanted to know how an innocent woman convicted of murder could live on after being executed. It stumped me. Since I was writing a paranormal fantasy, I figured that a miraculous conception that planted a fetus in her would be enough to postpone the execution, until the child was delivered. She would still have to be executed, which was sad, but then again, she would be giving birth to herself so she could live on and bring the real killer to justice and clear her name. It was a bit tricky, but fun to figure out. Then, guh, I had to use time-travel as a conveyance so she could reach the scene of the crime 14 years before.


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## Miriam Minger (Nov 27, 2010)

Have you published something new?  Let us know what inspired you to write your latest story.  

Miriam Minger


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## chrisstevenson (Aug 10, 2012)

Forgive the length, but I've been asked about this one several times. Crazy title, I guess.

I really wanted something different about Planet Janitor (a SF space opera) to stand out. The original idea did not spring from my forehead all at once, but came in stages. I had a friend who wanted to start a water ionization business called Planet Janitor, 15 years ago. He never started the company but I never forgot the company title – it had an environmentalist quality about it. Fast forward 14 years; I thought what would happen to a crew who landed on a planet that was knee-deep in skeletons from horizon to horizon? That idea simmered. A few weeks later, I read an article about space junk, reclamation, retrieving and recycling precious metals, like titanium, gold, silver, magnesium and aluminum. This gave me the idea for a crew who were adept at capturing space trash. Suddenly I knew I had the entire plot structure and outline for a book. I had a planet besieged by a genocide and a naive crew of environmentalists. Land the crew on the planet, to accomplish a routine mission, but confront them with the planetary killers responsible for the genocide. That’s when I knew I had a Starship Troopers meets Robinson Crusoe on Mars.


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## Miriam Minger (Nov 27, 2010)

Love that title, Planet Janitor.  

Is it possible that a really cool title can inspire the writing of a novel?  I think so, but wonder what you think.

Miriam Minger


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## chrisstevenson (Aug 10, 2012)

In my case, and with this particular book, the title did inspire me to write this to the end. The sub-title is Custodian of the Stars. I wasn't aware of how close it was in premise and structure to Firefly until I saw some episodes of the series.


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## brendajcarlton (Sep 29, 2012)

I freely admit that the premise of The Accident at 13th and Jefferson was my husband's idea.  Have three related people be bystanders at a freak accident and write three different novels depending on which of the three is killed.  I thought it was a fantastic idea, but wow was it difficult to write.  Each book had to stand on its own, and not be too similar to the others, but some external events remained the same with different reactions and outcomes given how the people had changed differently each time.  I must have rewritten Book 2 four or five times, until I got the balance with Book 1 right.  By then I had the hang of it, and Book 3 was easier.  In all it took me six years, mostly to get my skill level up to the challenge.  Just writing a single stand alone story seems easy now.  It's not like playing three dimensional chess.


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## NicWilson (Apr 16, 2011)

My first novel was inspired completely by politics. One of the strongest and craziest women in my life drew my attention to one particular issue, and it obsessed me. Both, seeing the downpour of legislation, debate, and polarized characterizations on the issue, and also seeing the personal side of it through her fears and experiences. She helped me research and revise it, and I think there were several months that we kept looking at each other through the very dark tint of the story, and resenting each other for it. 

I tried to handle so many subtle issues tied up in the greater one, through so many different viewpoints... It just overwhelmed the ideas I thought I'd had about the issue, about my own contribution to culture, about my own imperceptibly privileged upbringing.

I never thought I could have written that story. It's the darkest thing I've ever written. I prefer writing pulp stories with a lot of quirky dialogue, gruesome action, and over-the-top themes. I never would have thought I'd write a dystopian action novel about the complexities of gender politics. I doubt I'll write anything like it again.


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## Jerri Kay Lincoln (Jun 18, 2011)

Concerning my book, _Do Bears Poop in the Woods?_ . . . well, I was hiking through the woods one day on an old covered wagon trail, and there on the path before me was . . . well, you know the rest.


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## William Meikle (Apr 19, 2010)

Clockwork Dolls is a bit of a departure for me. It's darker than a lot of my other stuff, and features a protagonist who is very hard to like.

Dave has few redeeming features. The fact that he reminds me a lot of myself at a certain stage of my life is neither here nor there. He's also a skeptic of all things paranormal and likes to show off.

I wanted to write about such a person having an epiphany, of sorts, and it took me down some strange alleys, into studies of philosophical discussions, and thoughts of beer, love, and my place in an uncaring Universe.

As I've said, it turned out darker than I anticipated, but there's also hope here, and I learned some stuff about myself in its progress, which was nice.



> Does all human passion, all memory, all imagination come merely from the chemistry in our brains, like the movements of a clock follow from the arrangement of its cogs and wheels? Are we just clockwork dolls? Or is there an organizing principle at work, something we can ask for answers to the important questions of existence... something that might answer?
> 
> Dave Burns has asked.
> 
> Now he, and his friends, might not live long enough to understand the reply.


_Full of strong and well written characters, an ever building sense of dread, topped off with a satisfying conclusion. This novella hits the mark perfectly. - Ginger Nuts of Horror

I never thought that such a short novel could have such a huge impact, not only on my emotions but also on my ideas of God, the Universe and Fate. This is a thought provoker if ever there was one ... It's totally mind blowing. - Magic of Reading

... a brilliantly written story which offers plenty of rewards for those game enough to read it. - Fantasy Book Review

It's a novella that takes a piece of metaphysics and turns it into a monster. Keep your Secret, gurus. William Meikle has the cure for what ails me. - Wag the Fox 
_


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## William Meikle (Apr 19, 2010)

The Creeping Kelp is kelp. It creeps. 

It's a cautionary tale of what man is doing to the environment. A WW2 experiment resurfaces; a Shoggoth fragment meets some bits of jellyfish and some seaweed and together they decide they like plastic. They like it so much that they start to seek it out, and grow, and spread... and build.

It's a homage to several things. There's more than a touch of Lovecraft obviously, given that I've appropriated the Shoggoths, but there's also a lot of John Whyndham in there. I wanted to do a big-scale, Britain-in-peril novel for a while. The title came to me one day and I knew immediately that there was a story to be told there. There's also a bit of QUATERMASS in there too -- the old "British scientists screw up" genre has been with me for a long time and it's also something else I've always wanted to do. Here it is.

I started my fandom of the disaster genre young and at first it was from a Science Fiction perspective. The British ones from the '50s and 60's got my attention, in particular John Wyndham's DAY OF THE TRIFFIDS and THE CHRYSALIDS. Them, and A CANTICLE FOR LIEBOWITZ were my earliest introductions to the form. After that came tales of cosmic disaster, mainly Lieber's THE WANDERER and Niven and Pournelle's LUCIFER'S HAMMER. My interest was further piqued by Terry Nation's TV show THE SURVIVORS, and Stephen King's THE STAND, the first to being real horror to the genre IMHO. But my favorite in the genre is by Robert Macammon. His SWAN SONG is a roller coaster blockbuster which eschew's King's religious trappings for non-stop action and gritty realism mixed with a slug of the supernatural. My kind of tale.

I grew up on a West of Scotland council estate in a town where you were either unemployed or working in the steelworks, and sometimes both. Many of the townspeople led hard, miserable lifes of quiet, and sometimes not so quiet desperation. My Granddad was housebound, and a voracious reader. I got the habit from him, and through him I discovered the Pan Books of Horror and Lovecraft, but I also discovered westerns, science fiction, war novels and the likes of Mickey Spillane, Ed McBain, Alistair MacLean, Dennis Wheatley, Nigel Tranter, Arthur C Clarke and Isaac Asimov. When you mix all that together with DC Comics, Tarzan, Gerry Anderson and Dr Who then, later on, Hammer and Universal movies on the BBC, you can see how the pulp became embedded in my psyche.

If I had to describe my writing style in five words, it would be these: Entertaining, pulpy, fast-paced, old-school fun.

Order it now, or I'll send the Shoggoths round.

_If you are like me and grew up on those glorious nature run amok movies you will absolutely love The Creeping Kelp and I highly recommend it. - Famous Monsters of Filmland

The Creeping Kelp would make for a great beach read, and will give you shivers the next time you step on a piece of seaweed in the water. Highly recommended. - The Monster Librarian _


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## R.A. Hobbs (Jun 6, 2011)

For How Ninja Brush Their Teeth, I was in a deep writing slump.  I had recently been through an online critique of another story I had written and it was unanimously hated.  I couldn't bring myself to write for a whole week until I read a blog by Kristen Kathryn Rusch where she encouraged writers to get off their ass and write.  
I took a deep breath and reached for a writing prompt.  It was Ninja/Toothbrush.
And the rest is history.  
Well, not really history, it hasn't even made 10 sales yet, but that's the story behind it, anyway.


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## chrisstevenson (Aug 10, 2012)

While on a drive I was having conversation with my niece about finding some extra gas money when her daughter piped up from the back seat, continually interrupting us. My niece told her to shut up and mused, "We ought to pawn her for gas."

That line hit me like a ton of bricks, giving me inspiration for an idea. What if, in a future society, heads of household were allowed to pawn off family members (dependents) for a big fat advance to cover back taxes or debts? Pawn them to a company called Family Trade and Loan. Servitude could last from three months up to three years. The idea cultivated my YA distopian, _The Girl They Sold to the Moon._ It took me two months to write it. It has since taken the grand prize in a publisher's novel writing contest, received two contract offers and is in the process of a film option. The short query is below.

Eighteen-year-old Tilly Breedlove's father has sold her into a form of modern day slavery on Luna-the Tranquility Harbor Mining Company, 240,000 miles from home. He's received a hefty advance so he can pay off his back taxes-it's that or go to jail. Family Trade and Loan, an unscrupulous company, is more than willing to take her on and exploit her talent.

Forced to be an exotic dancer, she performs risque shows for the filthy, but filthy rich ore miners-a far cry from her modern and classical dance training. If she isn't resisting obscene advances from bearded "Prairie Dogs", she's fending off jealous head-liner acts who view her as a threat to their status-and when those jealous showgirls say "break a leg", they aim to cause it.

A tragedy on the Moon base, coupled with the suicide of her best friend, lands Tilly back on Earth, shackled to the Las Vegas-Henderson Gambling Complex. Her father defaults on the loan and goes into hiding, making Tilly temporary property of FTAL. That's the last straw. Angry and distraught, she plots with another older ward-they'll break out and make a run for it. If she can just get past the corporation's airtight security, and hunt down the father who abandoned her.

You never, ever know how and when inspiration will hit you. I've sense encouraged my nieces and nephews to act up or do something bad that will ignite a spark in me. Well, I'm kidding a little. But you get the idea.


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## strath (Dec 31, 2012)

_Sideshow At Honey Creek is based on some geneological (sic) research my dad did on my great-great-great grandfather. He founded a town, resisted Commanche, renegades, and the elements. I found him mentioned in newpapers here and there and the historical events surrounding his life and times. And, he was honored by several organizations such as the DAR.

Of course, as with most of my writings my characters sort of took over and ended up telling me their own stories. This added to the excitement and the vision of the very human characters they were. It added also to the plain fun I had writing it._


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## Miriam Minger (Nov 27, 2010)

Hope everyone is having a fantastic summer!

Let's get this party started again, shall we?  

One of my favorite out-of-the-blue inspirations for the first book in my Irish medieval O'Byrne Family series, WILD ANGEL, was Jimi Hendrix' classic Voodoo Chile.  Yep, for an historical romance novel.  

All I had to do was listen to that amazing, kick ass song and I could just see in my mind's eye a whole band of Irish rebels on their sweaty horses crashing through the woods after a successful raid against the Normans.

Wild, exhilarating, intense...just like WILD ANGEL.

What inspired YOU to write your latest book?


Miriam Minger


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## KellyHarper (Jul 29, 2012)

Ruined By You and Saved By You (or "Sooby Rooby" if you ask Elle Casey) were both inspired by a time in my life when I was off at college and my mom started feeling ill and was ultimately diagnosed with Stage 4 cancer.

Many of the themes are taken from what I was going through at the time, and some of the scenes and dialogue were inspired directly from the journals I've kept most of my adult life. The books, especially "Sooby", were quite a feat to tackle, at times.


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## Brian Olsen (Jan 13, 2013)

I work in theater, and my first writings were all plays and sketches. My book _Alan Lennox and the Temp Job of Doom_ initially started out as an idea in my head for a serialized late-night musical using pre-existing pop and rock music! It's changed quite a bit since then - only two of the main characters survived the transition and the plot only bears a passing resemblance to the original idea. I still think I might go back and write that musical some day...


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## chrisstevenson (Aug 10, 2012)

As I said in a previous post, The Girl They Sold to the Moon, did quite well. It ended up in a small bidding war between six small/indie houses and my agent has just finalized the contract with the best publisher. I tried another idea, using an age-old dream catcher. I hadn't heard of one used in such a way before and gave it a try. This one has since received four offers and my agent is putting this one out to the large houses. The short query is below:

        When seventeen-year-old Jory Pike cannot shake the hellish nightmares of her parent’s death, she turns to an old family heirloom, a dream catcher. Even though she’s half blood Chippewa, Jory thinks old Indian lore is so yesterday, but she’s willing to give it a try. However, the dream catcher has had its fill of nightmares from an ancient and violent past.  After a sleepover party and during one of Jory’s most horrific dream episodes, the dream catcher explodes, sucking Jory and her three friends into its own world of trapped nightmares—a place where there’s no color or electricity, the houses are derelict, and the streets are filled with murderers and thieves.

            They are now trapped in the web world, where every nightmare and evil spirit has been kept in quarantine, and these spirit beasts will stop at nothing to halt Jory and her friend’s passage through the realm.  Jory leads her friends through the web maze, following the clues of her ancestors.  She’ll have to decipher the strange footprints, path markers, and a mysterious riddle.  It all leads to the burning light that sears a hole through the middle of the earth.  But is that the tunnel of light where people really go when they die?  Or is it the Indian light of salvation—the circle of life—the hole in the web?  She soon discovers that she is the key and that none of her friends can escape this upside-down world unless she summons the courage to make the first step. 

The reception of both of these books has convinced me that I should stay in the YA category for now and keep pumping out unique ideas. None of my other books have ever received such attention and offers before.

chris


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## The 13th Doctor (May 31, 2012)

The Time-Travelling Assassins series (_Cigs, Bolan & Strange Men With Guns_, _The Shoemaker's Son_) came about because I love time travel and thought it would be interesting to write about time travelling assassins who go around killing people who have gone back in time to change history.

The Quality Times series (_The Whispering Tombs_, _The Grandparent Trap_) came about because, to be honest, I wanted to write my own version of Doctor Who, mixed with its spin-offs Bernice Summerfield and Iris Wildthyme.

And the Edinburgh Elementals series (_The Trouble With Pixies_, _Tears of Gold_) came about as there is not many Edinburgh urban fantasy stories, and since I know that city quite well, I thought I'd write one myself.


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## Jena H (Oct 2, 2011)

I've always enjoyed a good "heist" or caper movie, so It Takes a Thief is sort of inspired by those.  Actually, I loved the TV show Leverage, and while Thief isn't a Leverage wannabe (I only have two main characters rather than five), the impetus for my characters is to do good and help people, or right a wrong.  (A second It Takes a Thief story is in the editing stage and will be making its debut in the not-too-distant future.)


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## Teri Hall (Feb 10, 2013)

I was supposed to be writing the third in this other trilogy, but I got waylaid. And angry.

New Zapata was inspired by current events in our country. As you already know, in Texas, the state has been successful in refusing federal funding that pays for its Women's Health Program, which provides reproductive-health care for more than 130,000 poor women who don't meet Texas's narrow Medicaid eligibility requirements, because if they take the funding, they are federally obligated to include Planned Parenthood in the disbursement. The Texas legislature already slashed family-planning funding by two thirds, from $111.5 million to $37.9 million. Women are seeking contraception across the border, with no prescriptive advice.

In both Louisiana and Texas women are required to have an ultrasound which they must view while listening to a detailed description before they are allowed to have an abortion.

At the time of this writing, in Mississippi, Arkansas and both Dakotas there is one abortion clinic left standing.

This year, Arizona attempted to pass a bill that would allow employers to stop insurance coverage of women's contraceptives if the contraceptives were taken for birth control as opposed to for other medical reasons.

And then there's this:

http://video.msnbc.msn.com/the-rachel-maddow-show/48759449#48759449

The graphic for this particular segment was a car's side view mirror with the typical disclaimer that "objects in the mirror may be closer than they appear." The object? A coat hanger.

I work with students every day who were not even born when Roe v Wade happened and who have no clue what it could look like if it gets overturned. That Maddow segment made me ask, out loud in front of the TV, what *would* it look like? The result is New Zapata.


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## Natasha Holme (May 26, 2012)

Writing seven million words of diaries over the last twenty-five years was my inspiration.


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## LanelleH (Jul 4, 2013)

The story I'm writing is greatly inspired by the movie Cruel Intentions, past experiences with bullying, and also a Japanese manga called Boys over Flowers.


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## TWErvin2 (Aug 7, 2010)

With *Flank Hawk*, the initial thought that sparked the novel occurred while I was driving home from work. I was thinking about a few of the books I'd recently re-read, Zelazny's *Guns of Avalon * and Harry Turtledove's *World War: In the Balance*. One of the main turning points in *Guns of Avalon * occurs when Prince Corwin discovers a way to get gunpowder to function in the magical city of Amber. *In the Balance * is about an alien invasion during the height of World War II. The disparity in technology between the invaders and humanity is a major element in the novel's conflict.

Then I began to ponder, what would happen if a dragon encountered a World War II aircraft? Okay, maybe one can see how the line of thought formed. From there I began to devise a world where such an encounter could take place.

Next came the people and creatures that would inhabit the world, how it came to be, and the long-running, multi-layered power struggle that would come to influence events in the plot that I was devising. Finally, came Krish and Lilly, Roos and Road Toad-the main characters in the novel.


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## William Meikle (Apr 19, 2010)

The origins of THE HOLE are simple - I heard two news reports on the same day.

The first was about a sinkhole in small town USA.

The second was about a strange inexplicable hum plaguing a large area of country.

I wondered... what if they were both in the same place?

From there it was only a short distance to the town, a roadside bar and diner, and a couple of odd-job men down on their luck and about to literally fall into a hole filled with their worst fears.


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## Miriam Minger (Nov 27, 2010)

Thanks so much to all those who have shared the inspiration behind their books.  I'm endlessly fascinated by where stories come from.  What about you?  If you haven't shared with us about YOUR book, now's the time.

Miriam Minger


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## johnlmonk (Jul 24, 2013)

My book was inspired by my interest in vigilante fiction (Death Wish, Dexter, Harry Brown, movies/books like that).  One could argue Dexter is less of a vigilante than a serial killer, but he does "take the trash out."


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## Vaalingrade (Feb 19, 2013)

The Descendants was born of that most pure of human emotions: spite.

You see, I had just gotten back into comics, specifically X-men--more specifically New X-men: Academy X when editorial decided that there were too many mutants and put out an event called Decimation, which depowered or killed a bunch of characters, then put new writers on the book who killed a lot of my favorites specifically. Then it turned out that the real reason for the event was to get the X-men 'out of the way' to remove a big moral/continuity problem with their Civil War Event where the government forced through a superhuman registration act (something the X-men fought against constantly for 40 years of stories).

Somewhere between that revelation, a cyborg clone of Thor murdering a hero (who was then buried in A TARP!), and my favorite book being restarted under a writer who neither knew or cared about them, I snapped and turned the internet black with angry words.

This being the internet, the almost immediate response was 'let's see you do better'.

Whether I did better or not, I will point out that in the seven years I've been writing The Descendants, Marvel has started and canceled five (!) books along the same lines, none of them reaching issue #50. The Descendants will be posting issue #72 in two weeks.


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## pauldude000 (May 22, 2013)

I have always been a huge fan of dystopian/apocalyptic fiction ever since I read Alas Babylon as a young teenager, shortly after I started learning wilderness survival in the scouts. I started reading free works by various famous forum authors, and decided to give writing a try. This led into my first book, Surviving In America: Under Siege, which is now in its second edition.

I decided to use modern conspiracy theories to create a chilling and apocalyptic dystopian world, a world based upon our own. I searched for the most plausible theories, those which had the most supporting data and evidence to make the entire world believable. That task was not easy. I then collected together all of the supporting data and combined the theories into one grand theory for the plot of the book.

Fact is sometimes scarier than fiction. Just the data, consisting of news articles, declassified documents, eyewitness accounts, modern political quotes, and current events painted a chilling, nasty picture; it was nasty enough without even the need of the original interpreted theories. 

When I contemplated the main character, I considered the other works I had read, and wanted to deviate from the average plot... The plot where a rich guy with a military background buys tons of expensive stuff, stores it in a tardus shaped like a barn, bunker, or outbuilding, and miraculously holds the MZB's at bay while saving the world. Fake. I wanted a story where the protagonist has flaws that he must deal with. I gave him a few skills as well as weaknesses, and very little warning or money. 

Basically, Joe Anderson was created to be a real persona that people could connect with. 

I had an enjoyable time writing the book, and had to start on the sequel less than a month after I had finished the first. 

Why? 

I had to find out what happened next.


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## lynnfromthesouth (Jun 21, 2012)

I dreamed the beginning of Surfer Girl over five years ago. The only thing I saw of the protagonist was her arms and feet, and I only heard her speak once. However, in the dream she was introduced to the other main characters in the book, and I wrote that scene pretty much exactly the way I dreamed it. 

I don't normally remember my dreams, or they are very jumbled. The group of people from that dream really stuck in my mind, and it was over a year before I started writing out the story. They still all live in my head five years later. The character from the second book wasn't in the dream. I added him to that group for balance. The character who will title the third book was the most memorable character in the dream, and the one reviewers seem to love most.


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## Aya Ling (Nov 21, 2012)

Well...I was inspired by some bland, unappetizing British/American food when I was living abroad--hence the plot of my book is the protagonist goes around improving the food in the royal kitchen  All my readers think my book is about sending positive messages about fat heroines, but actually...it's more about appreciating good food!



Barbie Hall said:


> The story I'm writing is greatly inspired by the movie Cruel Intentions, past experiences with bullying, and also a Japanese manga called Boys over Flowers.


I love Boys over Flowers! At least the first ten volumes--truly riveting!


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## beccaprice (Oct 1, 2011)

Most of my fairy tales were inspired by what I saw was a lack of inspiration in the then-available children's stories when my kids were little. *A Princess for Tea* was inspired by The Paperbag Princess (which we loved). *The Dark* was inspired by a truly awful early 1900s play called The Blue Bird that my kids had to see for a class project. I rather liked the setup, but hated the ending (which I can't remember), and somehow *The Dark* came out of my attempt to re-write it. *Sunflower *was inspired by a toy cat my daughter had and loved, but wanted to know why the toy was named Sunflower by the manufacturer. *The Grumpy Dragon* was inspired by my daughter who hated to sleep, and my son who for totally unfathomable reasons decided to sleep in his closet instead of in his bed for many years. And so it goes.


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## Miriam Minger (Nov 27, 2010)

I know you're out there...wanting to share with us the inspiration behind your book.  


Miriam Minger


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## JamieCampbell (May 29, 2013)

An interesting thread!

"A World Without Angels" was created because I kept thinking of this angel walking along with feathers from his wings falling to the ground. I had no idea what his story was but he wouldn't go away until I worked it out.

My "Fairy Tales Retold" series came about because I heard a quote something like 'history is told by the victors'. I thought it was interesting, which made me think what if Fairy Tales were retold from the villain's perspective?

My "Hairy Tails" series came about purely because the title came to me. I then created the story of the animal shelter and turned it into a sweet little romance series.

"Gifted" came about because I lived in a haunted house for a few years and some weird stuff happened. I decided to use my experiences to add authenticity to a ghost story/mystery. Plus, now it's kind of fun telling people it's based on real experiences after they've read it, they turn ghost white.


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## AngryGames (Jul 28, 2013)

I'll just do the one I published about an hour ago, since I'm all excited and stuff (heh)

Ability - It's a bit of "Breaking Bad" meets "Heroes." I love Philip K. Dick, an it might sound weird, but I love that he wrote about all kinds of crazy drugs. Some drugs could do weird things. I thought...what if an enterprising young chemist, while manufacturing illegal drugs like meth/LSD/MDMA/some fictional drugs, stumbled onto a formula that unlocked parts of the brain?  I've always wanted to write a combination science fiction and urban fantasy story that combines 'supernatural' with technology. 

But dark. I loved Breaking Bad because it was dark, and did not have a happy ending. I like this. I'm tired of Hollywood happy endings that make no sense (World War Z *cough*) or are just terrible. I love, love, LOVED the first season of Heroes, but by the third episode of season two, I quit watching it. It was just so...stupid, corny, and too happy. The bad guys were the good guys now, or maybe the bad guys weren't really bad enough...something. The guy that plays Spock in the new Star Trek movies...that guy was a great villain. He was creepy, and he killed a lot of people (and 'ate' their power). *sigh*

I think this is why I can't watch anything that isn't on HBO or Showtime anymore now that BB is over. Nothing is dark and gritty enough.


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## Nancy Beck (Jul 1, 2011)

My first series, Haven New Jersey (the first 3 in my sig) came about mostly because the people across the street keep strange hours; I kept referring to as vampires . And the father, at least, would do strange things at all hours of the night, like trimming his hedges (at 11:00pm!), and shoveling snow in the midst of a major snowstorm - at like 1:00 in the morning!

I'd always wanted to write a fantasy about the town I lived in because I think it's so weird (as are the people - including me! ), so, I did. And it ends on sort of bittersweet note.

I came up with the next series - 5 books in that series - because of my interest in history - and because I'd started the beginning of the first book years ago. I went back to it and decided it started pretty well, liked the MC and the idea (supernatural/fairy tale creatures are real and living precariously (and secretively) next to unsupernatural, "normal" people in New York City), and the MC, tho part of the "old guard" supernatural people - a werewolf whose family has lived in the States for quite awhile - is trying to hide from any assassins her parents might send after her. She had to deal with their tortuous ways, which kind of dovetails with the abuse I had to deal with in my life just recently (and still dealing with to a certain extent).

The series is called Hide in Plain Sight, with the first book called Center of Attention, which of course is what she happens, as she's not willing to go much for hiding after all. 

Not sure how if it's going to end on a bittersweet note like the other series, but I do know I'll work in the 1939 New York World's Fair and Lou Gehrig Day, so I can work my parents into the mix, since my mother was a dancer at the World's Fair and my father was in the bleachers on Lou Gehrig Day.  They'll just be glimpses of them, but I decided to do it for fun. 

The other book is a mini-short story collection. I married an old movie (notice a trend, lol?) about a boxer who's a loser to a fairy story to the name of a Jonatha Brooke song that I always loved (Ten Cent Wings). Then I decided that short wasn't long enough, so I came up with an origin story for why the fairy is so nasty.


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## Moondreamer (Apr 27, 2013)

Hmmm... here goes.

The Shadow War serie and its characters came about after watching one too many time the preview clips from the Assassin's Creed games on Youtube. I'm not very good at playing video games, but I loved to watch those. Then came the idea of a modern day assassin using old fashionned weapons. My co-author added the science-fiction bits and Shadow War was born.

The Prince of Zammar was at first the idea of two characters. A lot of my stories start that way. I will be seeing a short scene including one or two characters and will just know that they need to be epxlored further. The world and plot came quite a bit later.


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## mdmeis (Oct 21, 2013)

This a great question and a wonderful opportunity for authors to connect with readers. When authors tell "the story behind the story" it creates connection and can lead to ongoing engagement between writer and reader.

Have you ever heard of the social book discovery platform Bublish? (www.bublish.com) Bublish allows authors to create book bubbles and share the stories behind their stories. Book bubbles can be created in seconds and shared by both readers and writers across multiple social networks, such as Facebook and Twitter. Included in every bubble is a book excerpt selected by the author, a bio, a book synopsis, a link to the author's website, and multiple buy buttons that take readers to all of the top online retailers. The "secret sauce" of the bubble is the author's insight.

As you stated, "readers want to know" where writers find their inspiration. The author insight is where authors can share their inspirations and back story. Bublish is FREE to both authors and readers.

Here's what a book bubble looks like. Click the link below to read the entire bubble. http://bit.ly/15TsqP8
-Matt


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## S.R. Booth (Oct 6, 2013)

The idea for Scinegue came from hearing about instances of eugenics that are going on in the world today. Okay so I must have had my head in the sand, but it was very eye-opening for me to realize these things were really happening and I thought talking about eugenics in a fictional setting might be eye-opening to others. (The supernatural/Evil spin came later because it was fun and who else would be behind some of the eugenics plots I can dream up?  )


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## dkgould (Feb 18, 2013)

mdmeis said:


> This a great question and a wonderful opportunity for authors to connect with readers. When authors tell "the story behind the story" it creates connection and can lead to ongoing engagement between writer and reader.
> 
> Have you ever heard of the social book discovery platform Bublish? (www.bublish.com) Bublish allows authors to create book bubbles and share the stories behind their stories. Book bubbles can be created in seconds and shared by both readers and writers across multiple social networks, such as Facebook and Twitter. Included in every bubble is a book excerpt selected by the author, a bio, a book synopsis, a link to the author's website, and multiple buy buttons that take readers to all of the top online retailers. The "secret sauce" of the bubble is the author's insight.
> 
> ...


Wow! that's awesome! Thanks for that link, I love stuff like this- mostly as a reader, but I bet it would be fun as a writer too! Like director's commentary for books instead of movies


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## Justawriter (Jul 24, 2012)

I took a class years ago on Forensic Psychology and found it fascinating, especially a landmark case from the 70's that resulted in the term, 'false confessions', those deemed to have been coerced and laws around how you can interrogate suspects. That stayed with me as I wrote TRUST, which looks at a woman who is about to get married who suddenly becomes a person of interest when one of her students goes missing. Her fiancé thinks he knows everything about her, then discovers there's a lot he didn't know, a murky past that makes people question how well they know her. I'm finally gearing up to release this, around Thanksgiving.


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## Hudson Owen (May 18, 2012)

Way back when, at the beginning of Glasnost and all that, I heard an unusual bit of news on the radio in my apartment in Brooklyn.  It seems that a Russian tank crew in then-Czechoslovakia had exchanged their tank for a case of vodka--Russian soldiers never having money--and the tank was driven to a metal recycling plant to be broken apart.  This was reported as a true event.

I thought, wow, if that's going on over there, I need to find out more.  So I began the research that culminated in my comic novel A Knock At The Door (in sig).  I included the tank incident in the story.


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## Miriam Minger (Nov 27, 2010)

mdmeis said:


> This a great question and a wonderful opportunity for authors to connect with readers. When authors tell "the story behind the story" it creates connection and can lead to ongoing engagement between writer and reader.
> 
> Have you ever heard of the social book discovery platform Bublish? (www.bublish.com) Bublish allows authors to create book bubbles and share the stories behind their stories. Book bubbles can be created in seconds and shared by both readers and writers across multiple social networks, such as Facebook and Twitter. Included in every bubble is a book excerpt selected by the author, a bio, a book synopsis, a link to the author's website, and multiple buy buttons that take readers to all of the top online retailers. The "secret sauce" of the bubble is the author's insight.
> 
> ...


Thanks for sharing this fantastic info, Matt!

Okay, all you indie authors out there. We're waiting with great anticipation....what's the inspiration behind your book?

Miriam Minger


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## debramurphy (Jul 6, 2011)

What a terrific thread.

I'm pulling a Nelson DeMille and rewriting a modern-day Grail-related thriller I published almost ten years ago--my main purpose being to fit it better into a series that has been taking shape in my mind over the years.

The initial inspiration for the book was two-fold. First, I had just had a rather nasty brush with a cult-ish religious group leader, and I thought, "Hm, what if you put an inherently unstable person in such an environment..." Mischief would surely ensue.

But the real "Aha!" moment came when I climbed the 280 ft scenic tower of a Midwestern Carmelite shrine and got (besides a great view of the surrounding countryside) the (most unholy!) image in my mind of someone being tossed out the open lancet windows. I mean, gee, what a great location for murder!

Cheers,

Debra Murphy


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## Miriam Minger (Nov 27, 2010)

I'm looking for inspiration...yours!  What inspired you to write your new book?

Miriam Minger


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## Lisa Grace (Jul 3, 2011)

My latest book, _True Treasure_, in my real-life history mystery line is based on my research into a bit of family folklore. My husband's grandmother swore she was related to the pirate Bloody Graham. Low and behold, his name was Bennett Graham, a British Royal Navy captain who was assigned to do a coastal survey of Costa Rica. The facts of the story already occur during the same time period I had to research for _The 15th Star_, (which I spent seven months researching) so it was serendipitous.
He was the first to draw a treasure map (being a surveyor that would have been right up his alley) and the first of the Barbary Coast pirates. 
The story is about the fabled Devonshire Treasure, which to this day has never been found, so it ties in perfectly with _The 15th Star_, which has never been found either. Real life history mysteries have turned out to be a good little niche for me. I get to tie in my love of real life adventure stories, with history, and combine them both into a "National Treasure' sort of tales.


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## MGalloway (Jun 21, 2011)

LisaGraceBooks said:


> My latest book, _True Treasure_...


Nice! I was wondering why you were relatively quiet around here as of late...


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## Lisa Grace (Jul 3, 2011)

MGalloway said:


> Nice! I was wondering why you were relatively quiet around here as of late...


Thanks for noticing.  I finally got the paperback out of _The 15th Star_, between writing (doing nano), researching, editing, formatting, marketing...I decided to buckle down and get a little bit more productive.


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## Miriam Minger (Nov 27, 2010)

My inspiration for writing historical romances?  Great reading on the beach during summer break from college.  Decided then and there that I would write them, too!  

What about you?  When was that moment when you decided you wanted to write a book?

Have a wonderful Thanksgiving!


Miriam Minger


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## MorganKegan (Jan 10, 2013)

True story: I'd just finished reading a faerie-related story by another author, and it left me feeling a bit unsatisfied. I was talking a long walk at night, something I do that helps me think, and I got to thinking about how I'd go about telling the kind of story that interested me. How would I fit actual, working magic into today's non-magical world, and make it believable? How could I bring faeries into our world?

I've always had wild, imaginative stories running around in my head, since I was a little boy. I've just never been able to get any of them down on paper. But something different happened that night, something that still amazes me. I suddenly heard my teen girl protagonist's soft, feminine, Tennessee-hill-country voice in my head, telling me her story.

I ran, literally ran, home, went straight to my keyboard, and typed out the entire first chapter rough draft as fast as I could type.


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## Flyover (Apr 18, 2013)

My inspiration is my environment.  I moved from outer suburbia to the wide open spaces of the High Plains.  I moved initially because I could afford to retire here.  As I got to know the people and culture I fell in love with rural America in general and rural South Dakota specifically.

There is a culture here that is unlike either coast, it is similar to southern charm but in a more down to earth flavor. This is a culture that say “Welcome, It's nice to meet you.”  A friend of mine visiting on time said it best, “When they wave, they use all five fingers.”

People here are honest hard working folks who have a practical view of life.  They are the ancestors of those rugged individuals who tamed the High Plains.  They’ve known great success and financial disasters. They are the great grandsons and daughters of the men and women who used a pick axe and shovel to turn the soil for planting.  They are the children and grandchildren of the Dustbowl families when the economy was bad and the farming was worse.  They were told stories about times when there wasn’t ten cents in an entire extended family.  They have seen bumper crops and soaring crop prices and they have seen drought when they had nearly nothing to sell.  

It makes them stronger and  more realistic.  Some how this translates to their love of the land, their Country and God.

Well.. That’s it.  This is an untold story.  A story of people living in towns with populations in the tens and hundreds rather than the then the tens or hundreds of thousands. 

I am inspired by an attitude,  an attitude of helping out if the need arises and standing on one’s own feet when the situation turns sour. When these folks are in need, they go to the family first, and the church second. Not government first last and always.

I’m proud to live here in South Dakota farm country.  I’ve learned many lessons in the past ten years.  What I have seen and what I have learned is my inspiration for writing what it write.


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## Miriam Minger (Nov 27, 2010)

Happy Holidays to all of you...and here's to 2014 and fresh inspiration!

Miriam Minger


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## Terrence OBrien (Oct 21, 2010)

Inspiration? Al Qaeda emerged as a powerful global organization that had allegiance to no national government. The Templars were in the same situation 800 years ago. Bring the Templars into the modern world, and see how they play together.


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## Miriam Minger (Nov 27, 2010)

Happy New Year!!

So...what are you writing now and what inspired you?


Miriam Minger


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## Moist_Tissue (Dec 6, 2013)

The book that I will be releasing was inspired by the housing bubble burst from a few years ago. I remember hearing about a TV show with a cancer-stricken meth manufacturer trying to make money to help his family. In my mind, I began turning over possibilities. What would I do if I had no job prospects and faced immediate foreclosure? I could work with the banks or I could find a way to make fast money. How would I do that? A-ha! Prostitution! I have a friend who is a sex-worker and I interviewed a few sex workers (strippers, phone sex operators and escorts) about their work. I realized that the issue is much more complex than simply painting these individuals as "victims".

The book that I am writing now is based off a piece of family history. My grandmother's (she was 5-6) uncle was lynched wearing his military uniform. He had recently returned from war (WWI) and he went about town wearing his uniform, feeling proud to have served his country. Klan members took exception to that. Then, I learned that my grandmother, as an adult, had an affair with a Klan member. She was literally chased out of town by his wife and other Klan wives. Oh, my grandma is black. So this story is about a lynching then a man's obsession with the victim's sister.


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## Gee Greenslade (Jan 3, 2014)

I come from a purely photographic/art photography background, but at one point in my life I worked in a department store. It was  such a diferent view of the world and I felt like all the good parts of my life just drained away. I wrote a short story about it - trying to write in the same way that my art looked. Im hugely inspired by one of our great Australian authors Shaun Tan and love his surreal way of telling a story. So really to answer the "what are you currently writing" - Im kind of currently writing from that place - where the written stuff simulates or tries to "look" like images. Damn its hard to explain. I feel like such a hipster! LOL


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## Scott Pixello (May 4, 2013)

Most of my books come from one or two key ideas:

_Luke, I am Your Father_: How can you ever know if you are ready to be a father?
_Memoir of a Gothic Girl_: Why are so many (youngish) people attracted to Goth subculture? Can a Gothic novel be funny?
_Live Long & Prospero_: What possesses anyone to want to live on a lighthouse? Especially with a dysfunctional lighthousekkeper with a _Star Trek_ fixation?
_Rainbow_: What would happen if an animal really could predict football scores during a World Cup?
_Gagfest UK_: Can you really steal a joke? What could happen if a heckler took his disappointment a step too far?
(Coming soon to a Kindle near you) _Keith Ramsbottom_ series: _Episode I (Rebel Leader_),_ II (The Emperor Strikes Back_), _III (The Return of the Pork Pie)_ A moral question for myself really: What would I do if I was a teenager growing up in an occupied country? Not World War II but Great Britain in AD 60 & the occupying power was the Holy Roman Empire. Would I fight and resist or sit back and admire their mosaics?


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## beccaprice (Oct 1, 2011)

In Dragons and Dreams. there's a story about a butterfly-fairy whho makes a kitten from a sunflower, and makes it life-size rather than fairy-size. One of my fans wanted to know what happened to the butterfly fairy and if she ever got her kitten.  The result of that was the book Fairies and Fireflies, and I just got my first review - 5 stars - from the netgalley version.


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## 57280 (Feb 20, 2012)

I write with a few pen names, and with this one I try to pay homage to those wonderful Hitchcock, twisty ending suspense mysteries.

I'm also a HUGE fan of Perry Mason, so I created a series that imagines Richard Nixon (yes THAT Richard Nixon) as an amateur detective. I set the series in the early 60s, right after he loses his race for governor in California. Of everything I write, I've never had more fun that I have had writing Nixon.

The inspiration came from Erle Stanley Gardner. I was in the bookstore and saw a Mason cover in the used section. It was so cool that it made me create the series.

Now, I've decided to update my two covers to have a 60s feel:










I just love it. (The old cover and link are in my signature--it hasn't migrated through the Amazon system yet.)

I've neglected this series of late, but this year I plan on at least three short novels (50k-ish) like the Gardner novels of old.

Too much fun!


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## Miriam Minger (Nov 27, 2010)

What was your strangest inspiration for a book?  

Me, well, not sure if it's strange, but the song Voodoo Chile by Jimi Hendrix was the inspiration for my medieval Irish romance, WILD ANGEL.  Heard that passionately amazing song one day and the story just unfolded in front of me...wild Irish rebels crashing through the woods on their horses after a successful raid against the Normans.  

Miriam Minger


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## Jennybeanses (Jan 27, 2011)

I didn't know it at the time I started writing my novel, Heart and Home, but it would be the catalyst in helping me cope with my mother's unexpected death. I started writing it in 2006, during NaNoWriMo, and all but finished it. Then life happened and it got put on the backburner and forgotten for almost seven years. My mother died in January 2013, and when I finally started all my pieces back together that story kept nagging at my core. We came back from a lovely vacation at the beach and the next day I pulled it up, started writing again and finished it in about two weeks. It was an unexpected breath of freedom and fresh air, not only to be writing again, but to be writing about something so painful and finally being able to understand what my main character must have been going through.


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## Miriam Minger (Nov 27, 2010)

What has inspired you to start your novel in 2014?

Me?  Trying out a new genre...erotic romance.  

Miriam Minger


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## A past poster (Oct 23, 2013)

My inspiration for _The Last Season, The Story of a Marriage_, was an image that come out of nowhere of three middle-aged adults sitting at a dinner table, a married couple and a single man. The husband asked the man what his intentions were. The fellow replied, "I intend to marry your wife." I don't know where the image came from, but I knew it was a gift and I ran with it!



The seed for my novel, _The Writers' Conference_, was an experience I had at a conference. I had never been in an atmosphere that intense! I had just finished writing my first novel, Realities, and I had an agent, so I wasn't attending with an agenda. What I was witnessing was a shock! I started taking notes on what I was seeing, which was more interesting than the lectures. When I came home, I started writing the book. It took me over thirty years to finish. The first draft was too long, and the agent I had at the time told me that I couldn't say the things I was saying about the publishing industry in print. My first thought was: 'Yes, I can! I am an American!' My second thought, which I articulated, was to ask for the manuscript back. I kept working on it, taking it out every five years until I felt I had finally gotten it right.


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## Miriam Minger (Nov 27, 2010)

Marian said:


> My inspiration for _The Last Season, The Story of a Marriage_, was an image that come out of nowhere of three middle-aged adults sitting at a dinner table, a married couple and a single man. The husband asked the man what his intentions were. The fellow replied, "I intend to marry your wife." I don't know where the image came from, but I knew it was a gift and I ran with it!mages-amazon.com/images/I/51uzlQyTfZL._SL75_.jpg[/img][/url]


Love this! Sometimes inspiration hits you like a flash.

I'm curious. What inspired you to simply write? A teacher? A mad passion? The desire to try something new?

Me...my favorite beach read during summer breaks from high school and college was historical romance novels. I loved them so much, I decided then and there that one day I would write one. It took another eight years, but I finally started my first book, a Viking romance in honor of my Norwegian heritage, Twin Passions. I snagged a NY agent based on a couple chapters and a short outline...and she sold that proposal to my first publisher, and voila. My writing career was born.

What got you started?

Miriam Minger


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## Miriam Minger (Nov 27, 2010)

What inspired you to write your book?  Readers love to know the story behind the story!

Happy Spring Break!

Miriam Minger


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## SunshineOnMe (Jan 11, 2014)

My book is based on my life. The story I wanted to share was finding joy in the midst of hardships. I loved showing childhood innocence and magic despite the outside circumstances. I also wanted to share the recovery I went through. I wanted to share hard truth in a way anyone could relate with, and still not be a depressing read.

I think we all can relate with certain emotions, even if the circumstances leading to them can be so different. It can be encouraging. That's why the spoiler is in my title.  Ghost No More


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## Miriam Minger (Nov 27, 2010)

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Miriam Minger


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## Rae Scott Studio (Jan 26, 2014)

oh wow, good question.... one I am working on I have honestly no clue. LOL next 4? some from friends some from nowhere and some from my own life..


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## von19 (Feb 20, 2013)

Life...?

Sent from my SM-T210R using Tapatalk


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## 75814 (Mar 12, 2014)

I'm usually inspired as a jumping off point by things that I enjoy reading or watching. Sometimes it comes about as a challenge. My latest novel, SoulQuest, came about almost ten years ago. I had an idea for a comic book and I was trying to find an artist. One guy had a great style, very manga-influenced, but it didn't fit the story I had in mind. Still, the style made me think of one of my favorite video games of all time, Final Fantasy VII, and I came up with the concept of SoulQuest, inspired by FF7. I pitched it to him, he loved it, did a few designs, then disappeared.

I later dusted it off for another artist who contributed even better designs, gave me some valuable feedback, and even did a few pages before also vanishing.

Then last year, I was combatting writer's block, found my notes and scripts gathering dust (figuratively speaking since it was on my hard drive), and went through them. That's when I decided to do it as a novel.

Another thing that's given me a lot of inspiration is advice from other authors. I can't tell you how many times a fellow author has said to me, "you should try writing a story along the lines of this" and I'll blow it off. But it'll take root in my mind and I'll come back to it at some point in the future.


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## Wayne Stinnett (Feb 5, 2014)

As a young man, I served in the Marine Corps and spent a month in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. After that, I worked as a deckhand on a small Caribbean freighter, worked as a commercial fisherman, did a lot of scuba diving and worked as a Divemaster. I lived in central Florida, the Florida Keys, Cozumel, Mexico, and Dominica, in the Lesser Antilles.

My books revolve around a retired Marine, working as a fishing and diving charter boat owner in the Keys, with forays to Cuba and Cozumel.

Go figure.


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## Miriam Minger (Nov 27, 2010)

Join in and tell us about what inspired your latest book!  


Miriam Minger


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## Eskimo (Dec 31, 2013)

I have always been fascinated with the subject of siblings, and it is one that is deeply personal. 

A long time ago, my older brother was killed in a car accident when he was just 24 years old and that left an indelible mark on my life and on my writing. Oddly, I did not intentionally set out to write about my brother in my first novel, "Post Pattern." It wasn't until I was finished with the initial draft did I fully comprehend the personal implications of the story. 

All three of my novels have something to do with sibling relationships. In many ways, the exploration of sibling relationships in my novels is an opportunity for me to better come to grips with my brother's death. And as Joan Didion described it in "The Year of Magical Thinking," a goal of understanding a loved one's death is sometimes our way of trying to bring them back to life.


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## Jason Eric Pryor (Jan 30, 2013)

One of my favorite TV shows is Joss Whedon's Firefly. Not only are the characters amazing, but I absolutly fell in love with that world...or 'Verse as some are inclined to call it.  

I started thinking about the backstory of that world. In Firefly, the Earth was over-populated and the resources were used up. So, another solar system was located and there was a mass exodus from Earth to settle the new planets and moons.

I started thinking about how that process might have gone. Maybe, before another solar system was found, they terraformed Mars as an initial option. I started creating my world based on that idea. I've described my Crash Wagon characters to some of my friends as being the ancestors of those that settled the new solar system in Firefly. I think I should note that my series is not intended to be tied in to Firefly in any way. Crash Wagon is it's own separate world. I just used the backstory of Firefly as a heavy inspiration, then just built it up from there. I also try to throw in a little of the sci-fi western feel that Firefly has. Some of the characters speech patterns are definitely inspired by the way characters in Firefly talk.


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## SunshineOnMe (Jan 11, 2014)

David Chill said:


> I have always been fascinated with the subject of siblings, and it is one that is deeply personal.
> 
> A long time ago, my older brother was killed in a car accident when he was just 24 years old and that left an indelible mark on my life and on my writing. Oddly, I did not intentionally set out to write about my brother in my first novel, "Post Pattern." It wasn't until I was finished with the initial draft did I fully comprehend the personal implications of the story.
> 
> All three of my novels have something to do with sibling relationships. In many ways, the exploration of sibling relationships in my novels is an opportunity for me to better come to grips with my brother's death. And as Joan Didion described it in "The Year of Magical Thinking," a goal of understanding a loved one's death is sometimes our way of trying to bring them back to life.


Aww I'm so sorry about your brother. I think your book is a beautiful tribute.


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## von19 (Feb 20, 2013)

Life...
...and my questionable imagination. 

Cheers~

Sent from The International Space Station using Tapatalk


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## ThrillerWriter (Aug 19, 2012)

My mother died in 2013. She was 52 and had cancer. We hadn't spoken for three years before she was diagnosed, and I didn't think I wanted anything to do with her even when I heard she had cancer. I spent the next seven months falling in love with her. We were two states away, but I traveled there constantly despite writing and working on my MBA. 

She died in June. 

In September I stepped outside at work, pretty overwhelmed emotionally about it all--the emotions come and go surrounding her death. I was crying and I just asked myself what would I do to have her back. The answer was simple, shocking, and left no room for doubt. I'd burn the whole world to the ground if I could have her back for a day.

The Devil's Dream kind of wrote itself on the spot. I really just had to sit down and let the words come.


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## chrisstevenson (Aug 10, 2012)

I'd been a slave to the keyboard and typing chair for six months, having not been out of the house. So I jumped at the chance when my niece, Jamie, ask me to come along for a ride. Driving down a back road with Jamie and her daughter, Fia, on a balmy summer day, we were discussing how low our gas was and if we could make to a town called Fort Payne. Fia was acting up in the back seat, broadcasting 180 decibels from the hole in her face. Jamie reared her head and said, 
"Shut the hell up, please. Or we'll pawn your azz for gas money at the next pullout, I swear!"

Fia tried, "But I was just--" 

"Shaddap!"

I thought about that outburst for a minute. My ears were still ringing. Then it hit me... What if, I mused, that in a distressed (dystopian) society, heads of households were allowed to pawn dependents to a company called Family Trade & Loan for huge cash advances? And what if that dependent was a teenage girl who ended up with a six-month sentence at the Tranquility Harbor Moon base on Luna, assigned to a rough and tumble mining company filled with slobaholic miners? 

Wait. What about a Burlesque  in Space? 'Cause maybe she's forced to work as an exotic dancer and given an "Attractapeal" rating for her physical attributes. Oh, gawd, yea. And let's give her a tin number tag and a jumpsuit that identifies her as a Sunshine Class (12 to 18 year-olds) ward. 

All this brainstorming materialized in about 20 minutes and all I could hear was white noise in my head--I'd tuned everything else out. 

(Cuss word)

I couldn't get home fast enough to start pounding plastic and scribbling notes. I'd heard plenty about the sex slave market but this would be a sanitized, legal work program sanctioned by the government. What kind of abuses could such a powerful entity inflict upon its slave labor wards? Unlimited, I decided. Because most of the cash advances levied out were screened to force the payment of huge delinquent back-tax settlements. Out of sight, out of mind, wards wouldn't stand a chance in hell. Let the personal rights and freedoms be d*mned and trampled. 

And that's how it all began for The Girl They Sold to Moon, a young adult dystopian thriller.  The cover art is stunning, filled with glitter and soft hues. It has large font for easy reading. The e-copy will come out for the official launch right around July 1rst.

I think the lesson here is that lightning can strike at the most uneventful and unexpected times. Rides, walks, runs and vacations--they're all ripe for the muse to appear and start the creative dance. Get out and change your scenery. It's good for what ails you if you're blocked. It sure busted me out of a creative freeze. 

Cheers, 

Chris


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## Miriam Minger (Nov 27, 2010)

Thanks for sharing the inspiration for your books!  It's fun, isn't it?  More please.    I know I love to read them and other folks do, too.

  
Miriam Minger


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## pauldude000 (May 22, 2013)

I write in two genre, namely how-to and TEOTWAWKI (The End Of The World As We Know It, or Post Apocalyptic) science fiction. The how-to books are inspired by my real life hobbies. My favorite hobbies all revolve around the great outdoors, camping, hunting, fishing, hiking, and wilderness survival (also called bushcraft). I also love to teach what I know.

My "4 Survival" series is based around teaching wilderness survival knowledge and primitive living skills. 

"The Amazing Wood-Gas Stove" is a construction/informative book over an interesting and highly portable camping stove design that I have been building and perfecting for my own camping use for many years.

"Monster Catfish, Fishing For Whales"... the title says it all. I do not know how many hours I have spent on a lake shore in Kansas with two twelve foot ocean rods, answering the same question from different curious people. 

"Are you fishing for whales or something?" 

My answer is also invariably the same, spoken with a quirky grin. "Why yes... Yes I am!" 

------

The inspiration for my novels came from a different source, though one naturally led to the other. I started reading end of the world fiction as a teenager, reading stories from themes of nuclear war such as Pat Frank's "Alas Babylon" to themes like an asteroid strike in "Lucifer's Hammer."  Such stories provided a look at the best and worst traits of humanity combined with a struggle for life, love, and desperate happiness amid the ashes of a familiar civilization and crumbling world. 

My fondness for wilderness survival took me to several forums off the beaten path. One of these forums had a board dedicated to Post Apocalyptic World fiction. Anyone was allowed to post their story, and after reading numerous stories on the board I decided to give writing PAW fiction a try. At that point in time I had no intention of "going pro." I just wanted to see if I had any talent in the area; I wanted to see if I could write.

However, I did not want to be a broken record, rehashing the same plots or themes as other newbies in the forum had been doing. I wanted my stories to be unique, with a twist. I had an idea for a world almost exactly like our own that was based around the concept of the conspiracy theories which abounded like flies on honey in the other parts of the main forum, outside of the fiction section. I decided to create a world literally based upon the worst, the nastiest, and the most convincing conspiracy theories I could find on the internet. If the conspiracy theory didn't have at least some form of proof or evidence, it was rejected. The first story would revolve around the paranoid theme that "the government really was out go get you." 

Once I had the basis for the fictional world, my two current TEOTWAWKI novels, "Surviving In America: Under Siege" and "Surviving With Joe" were born in a span of a year and a half. I finished the stories, and then started another story when the forum owner closed the PAW fiction board without warning. I thought that was the end of my writing career. The proverbial dust started to settle thickly upon my stories as they existed now only upon my hard drive.

A couple of years later, I discovered self-publishing and decided to give it a try. Believe it or not, the first book I published was neither of my stories. I published "The Amazing Wood-Gas Stove." It was not until I started seeing success with that book that I decided to give my old stories a chance. Now I mainly write TEOTWAWKI fiction with the occasional how-to.

It's weird how that worked out. When I first joined up with Amazon, I had no intention of writing fiction.


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## Rick Soper (May 2, 2014)

Mine started with the simple question "What if?" which for me was an offshoot of the fill in the blank statement "Wouldn't it be cool if...".  that all relates back to the all American Fantasy of stumbling into wealth and fame.  At one point or another we've all thought about winning the lottery, creating the next application thats going to revolutionize the computer industry and make us a billion dollars, or doing that something that throws us into the limelight and gives us everything we could desire.  So I started thinking what if someone saved a rock star from drowning and then not only became friends with him, but started singing for him, and together they became wildly successful.  Which is kind of like a Star is Born with the saving from drowning twist, so I extrapolated out that idea and asked the additional question what if the "accidental" meeting wasn't actually "accidental" but part of a larger plot?  And then it just took off from there to become the three parts of my Rock Series, The Rock Star, The Singer, and The Stage.

I set the books in Monterey, CA because I grew up in nearby Salinas.  I added Russian characters because I met Russian girls in Monterey at a few bars on more than one occasions.  I put Twins in the book because I went to school with multiple sets of twins. I put farmers, truckers, and agricultural shippers in the book because those are the guys I went to high school with.  I put FBI characters in the books because I like reading about them.  Basically I came up with my original concept and then peopled it with places and individuals I was familiar with. Which is probably similar to what everyone does, but it's also what worked for me.


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## Miriam Minger (Nov 27, 2010)

Hope everyone is enjoying their summer and readings lots of great books.  Speaking of...what inspired *your* latest book?  

Miriam Minger


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## 75845 (Jan 1, 1970)

My novel _Seattle in Shorts_ was inspired by a magazine article Lisa Kinoshita, "Seattle remembers the Japanese internment"

http://www.seattlemag.com/article/seattle-remembers-japanese-internment

and in particular this photograph taken in 1942 on Bainbridge Island










_edited to correct error created by our filter. Thanks for the heads-up, Marcia.. --Betsy_


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## Sheluvspink (May 14, 2014)

My book If I Break was inspired by a old Christina Aguilara song "Walk Away."


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## Miriam Minger (Nov 27, 2010)

Sheluvspink said:


> My book If I Break was inspired by a old Christina Aguilara song "Walk Away."


Anyone else inspired by a song for their latest book? Voodoo Chile by Jimi Hendrix inspired my Irish historical romance WILD ANGEL. Go figure!

Miriam Minger


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## Maud Muller (Aug 10, 2010)

The inspiration for my comedic novella, Confessions of a Liberal Lover, was a clay statue of a gargoyle I purchased at an artist cooperative on Prince Edward Island. The gargoyles created by the artist were not the frightening demons one usually sees, but rather whimsical and endearing. The one I purchased was posed sitting cross legged reading a book and wiping his eye with a handkerchief. It was entitled, Happy Ending, and I fell it love with it. A few months later, I glanced up and saw the statue sitting on the hutch over my desk. Something about it made me want to run ideas for my new novella past him. That's when it occurred to me that the gargoyle would make a perfect alter ego for the protagonist in my novella. I think it worked pretty well.


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## Miriam Minger (Nov 27, 2010)

What inspires you to write books in a particular genre?  Me, I loved reading historical romance on the beach during summer breaks from college...so of course, I had to try my hand at it.  


Miriam Minger


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## going going gone (Jun 4, 2013)

Hi, Miriam! Thank you for asking.

deleted so it can't possibly used to i.d. me or sell child brides.


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## Rue Hirsch (May 4, 2014)

I've enjoyed reading the inspiration for all these books here.   I love writing fantasy because I'm a huge nerd. Dragons, magic, and witches stroke my fancy. Monsters make me curious. Fantasy just hold a mystique for me.


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## Jamie Maltman (Nov 1, 2013)

I love fantasy, reading about the Roman Republic, and art.

So I thought, what if there was a world like the Roman Republic, where art was magic, but just returning to the world after disappearing for a while? (And follow-on questions like... why did magic disappear?) That's my series in progress.

But the novella I'm writing right now, which fits as 2.5 in the series, came from my editor and beta readers of book 2 really liking some secondary characters. I decided to flesh them out a bit, and was talking out possibilities for the story while driving and it came to me that it should be first person with one of the characters, with something taking the main characters out of the way a bit, and everything fell into place. Now it's writing itself, and I'm having a blast.


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## Miriam Minger (Nov 27, 2010)

Thanks for posting, Lou Cadle, T. Hirsh, and Jamie Maltman!  All kinds of inspiration going on here...natural disasters, fantasy and more.  Why don't you post the inspiration for *your* latest book.  Enjoy your weekend and hey, read a great book, too!

Miriam Minger


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## John Donlan (Sep 20, 2014)

My book falls loosely within the steampunk category. I grew up in a city that was at the heart of the industrial revolution, which meant that a lot of my school trips back in the day were to museums that showcased the machinery and working of industry that came about during that time. I was also surrounded by architecture from the Victorian era. Old factories, smoke stacks rising up to the skies, raised rail lines and so on. 

Coupled with that, I've also always had a fascination with ideas of the 'little' people, rising up against an oppressive regime and fighting for freedom. I get a chill just thinking about it. All of that, I think, is what inspired me to write the book I did. It's a rather niche category, but I'm still glad I did it.


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## Miriam Minger (Nov 27, 2010)

Okay, let's pump up the volume here.  If you've written a book, readers want to know about it.  

So what inspired *you* to write YOUR book?



Miriam Minger


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## Z. Rider (Aug 15, 2014)

It was 2007, and Twilight was still huge. Vampires were going through a sexy, high-romance phase. I'd just seen Near Dark for the first time in yearsandyears. I wanted to do something different, so I took the romance out of having a vampiric condition, and I put a lot of weight on the friendship between the main characters instead of having a love interest. (Nonromantic ties fascinate me anyway—many of my favorite books have nonromantic relationship at the forefront (friends, siblings, competitors, mentor/mentee).) The first draft sat in the back of a closet for years, but I'm glad I kept it and finally came back to it.


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## SteveHarrison (Feb 1, 2015)

My inspiration for _TimeStorm_ initially came from my brother when we saw a replica 18th century sailing ship on Sydney harbor (Australia) some years ago. He asked, "what if that was real convict ship?"

I became obsessed by that question and came up with a story inspired by the Hornblower books, another obsession, Australian convict history, time travel and the wonderful adventure novels I read 
growing up. I also threw in some elements from modern action thrillers, leading a friend to describe it as Hornblower meets Die Hard! Anyway, it consumed me and provided a huge amount of fun 
over the years it took to complete.


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## Marina Finlayson (May 2, 2014)

Would you believe the inspiration behind _Twiceborn _was a visit to the bathroom at the local cinema complex? The stalls were unusually large and fancy, and I was thinking, "Wow, you could use these as change rooms, they're so big" (yes, I know, my life is a thrill a minute), and then I had a vision of a woman changing disguises in a public toilet, because she was carrying something important and she was trying to evade pursuit.

A whole trilogy came out of the questions that arose from that: who was she? what was she carrying that was so important? who was following her and why?


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## henderson (Jul 14, 2014)

First time poster, long time lurker.

Inspiration for my book was to write a fantasy story that I wanted to read.

Simple as that.

Published my first book yesterday, too.


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## Marina Finlayson (May 2, 2014)

Congrats, henderson! and welcome to kboards.


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## henderson (Jul 14, 2014)

Marina Finlayson said:


> Congrats, henderson! and welcome to kboards.


Thank you very much, Marina!!


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## Guest (Feb 4, 2015)

My series was inspired by events in my own life. Restructuring at my company, the economic downturn, and my age made me realize that sooner or later I would be out of a job. I visited a small city in the Pacific Northwest and decided on impulse to move there.

Before I could change my mind or do much research on the new area, I sold my house in California and left my old life behind. Much as I've grown to love this region, it was quite a culture shock for me. I was use to comfortable California suburbs and a comfortable salary and that was all gone. I've adapted and am quite happy. I was quite the workaholic back in the day and for the first time in my adult life, I've been able to relax and enjoy life.

Eventually, my friends encouraged me to pick up writing again. I read writing books, joined critique groups and used my own backstory as a premise. I added attractive people, an adorable dog, mixed them together with a little murder and mayhem, and I'm now finishing the 5th book in the series.


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## RN_Wright (Jan 7, 2014)

The stories in American Triptych came from earlier struggles in school and my work life afterward. The flash fiction works were inspired by mostly humorous sketches I dreamed up in response to then-current events. The name Orlo Suggs floated around in my brain with no anchor until I just sat down and started writing a science fiction story about him. His name wasn't funny enough for a comedy sketch but was odd enough for science fiction, I thought.


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## Miriam Minger (Nov 27, 2010)

henderson said:


> First time poster, long time lurker.
> 
> Inspiration for my book was to write a fantasy story that I wanted to read.
> 
> ...


Super congrats on publishing your first book, Hondus Pointe, R.D. Henderson!

Z. Rider, I love your cover and title for Suckers!

Steve Harrison, TimeStorm sounds great! As an author of historical romance, I love anything with that history aspect.

Yes, Marina Finlayson, inspiration comes from the wildest places. Best of luck with Twice Born!

Great cover and concept for your 5-book series, Matty Cruz Mysteries, R.Marquez!

Love the name Orlo Suggs, R. N. Wright, in your American Triptych!

All amazing tales of inspiration. Thanks for sharing! More please...

Miriam Minger

*Something we can do is spread the word about each other's books--and I just tweeted all of yours! Best of luck and happy sales!


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## hardnutt (Nov 19, 2010)

The inspiration for Dead Before Morning, the first book in my 15-strong Rafferty & Llewellyn series was the desire to write about a British detective who was an ordinary Joe, rather than an educated middle-class type as so many are in detective stories from Britain (Morse, Dalgliesh, etc).

I thought, seeing as the police had historically been a career for the working-classes here (and elsewhere), it would be a realistic line to take.

I also thought it would add a twist and some humour if the council-estate-raised Joe Rafferty came from a family not averse to a little gentle law-bending.

It's been a fun ride for me and a lot of readers seem to enjoy them and find Rafferty a great character, particularly since I partnered him with more moral than the Pope Welsh intellectual, Dafyd Llewellyn.

And Rafferty's naughty family provides inspiration for some amusing goings on in the sub-plots.


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## CaraS. (Jul 18, 2014)

I live in the southern USA, and it seems every hill and hollow has a "Crybaby hollow" legend. It's based on local folklore, but I thought it might be interesting to have the scary legend be a front for a real-life crime. Thus was born, "The Secret of Crybaby Hollow." That story does best of all my fiction, so I'm now working on another novel set in the same fictional region with the two main characters (sheriff's department investigator and game warden) for a missing girl story, "Where Whippoorwills Call."


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## BRONZEAGE (Jun 25, 2011)

Second novel of the Atlantic Bronze Age [ yes, they had one! not everything happened in the Mediterranean! ] at 1600 BCE is titled *Stealing Tara*.

It riffs on and is inspired by a very early myth, _The Destruction of Derg's Hostel_. That myth has specific references which fit nicely with the middle Bronze Age archaeology, particularly that its hero Connery owned a gold cup. Only 6 or so gold cups have been found in the Isles/Amorica (Brittany) and they are all of that era.

Now to finish the last chapter, when Connery is irrationally killed.

The first chapter can be found here:


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## Miriam Minger (Nov 27, 2010)

Geraldine Evans, JS Dunn, and CaraS, thanks for sharing what inspired your books.

Did you finish that later chapter, JS?  

Love your covers, Geraldine.  

I know you're out there, authors, so tell is what inspired *YOUR* latest book!

Miriam Minger


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## Kirkee (Apr 2, 2014)

RN: Orlo Suggs  LOL! Laughed my butt off when I saw
that.

Henderson: Welcome to the madhouse.

What inspired my *Fifty Shades of Tinsel?*(Portrait of a Hollywood hustler)

Since you asked...
I drove a cab in LA (Beverly Hills, Hollywood, Bel Air, Santa Monica, Palisades, Marina, Pasadena, et al) for many, many years (both days & nights). One of the best
jobs a writer can have (if you write about people, that is). You get them all; meet all types:
the rich, the poor, junkies, hookers, pimps, johns aka tricks, movie stars, producers, studio heads, pushers, high class call girls and, yes, hustlers aka gigolos...like the type in my novel:
Jimmy Riff aka James Kidd (as dubbed by his tough guy manager/pimp, one Benjamin T. Styles.)
By the way, the 1st volume is free all over the place (at the moment.)

So I suggest to anyone who wants to write, anyone starting out: be around all types...and keep your eyes & ears open.


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## TechnicianCerberus (Feb 14, 2015)

For my Corsairs novel the inspiration actually came from the airship itself. In my head I was designing an airship, including a bicycle apparatus to propel it and a pilot's station with a glass floor so you could look down and see the world, and the story just sort of formed itself around that. I'll admit that I've been in love with airships almost from the moment I learned about them, especially since they feature so prominently in games and anime that I've really loved.

I mean sure, I realize that airplanes and helicopters are cooler not only to fly but to ride in, but I've always been entranced by the idea of being a crew member aboard an airship and how it would be similar and different from crewing a watership.


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## William Meikle (Apr 19, 2010)

About BROKEN SIGIL - a novella.

The black bird has been with me for a long time - around 50 years now.

I think I first saw The Maltese Falcon in around 1963. 

My granddad was a big Bogart fan, and I remember long Sunday afternoons spent sitting at his feet watching movies on the tiny black and white TV that was the norm back in the UK in the early Sixties. Back then everything was Britain was still in black and white - the Beatles were about to change all that, but Bogey would stay eternally gray and eternally Sam Spade for me. Even at that early age there was something about the snappy dialogue and the larger than life character that spoke to me. 

I saw the film several times before I got round to reading the book - aged around 12 so about 1970. In much the same way as the film had, the book also spoke to me, touched something in me - the stuff that dreams are made of if you like.

When I started writing for myself, back in school, my voice was heavily influenced by teenage longings - I hadn't learned enough of the ways of the world to be confident and sparse, I wanted to be flowery and intense and intellectual.

University, then ten years of being a corporate drone quickly drummed that nonsense out of me. I developed cynicism and from that my own voice started to emerge, enough to ensure I could cope with being an adult but not yet enough to turn me into a writer.

The booze did that. Booze and nightmares and a new wife that understood me better than I did myself.

The booze is part and parcel of being brought up in a working class environment in the West of Scotland. Beer came easy to me in my late teens, a love affair I still have to this day. Whisky I had to work a little harder at, but I persevered and developed a taste for single malts that means my habit is largely curtailed by the expense. It doesn't mean I don't get the thirst though.

The new wife came along in the late '80s a couple of years after the old one and I realized we didn't really get on very well and went our separate ways. Sue saw that my drinking was getting out of control, and liked me well enough to help me do something about it. 24 years later, she's still helping.

The nightmare? I've been having it off and on since I was a boy. It's of a bird - a huge, black, bird. The stuff that dreams are made of.

In the nightmare I'm on the edge of a high sea cliff. I feel the wind on my face, taste salt spray, smell cut grass and flowers. I feel like if I could just give myself to the wind I could fly. Then it comes, from blue, snow covered mountains way to the north, a black speck at first, getting bigger fast. Before I know it it is on me, enfolding me in feathers. It lowers its head, almost like a dragon, and puts its beak near my ear. It whispers.

I had the dream many times, and always woke up at this point.

Then, in 1991, I heard what it said.

"Will we talk about the black bird?"

The next morning, for the first time since 1976, I wrote a story. It wasn't a very good story, but something had been woken up, and the day after that I wrote another, a wee ghost story. It didn't have a black bird in it, but it did have some jazz, and a sultry broad, a murder and some dancing. When that one made me 100 pounds in a ghost story competition, I was on my way.

The bird comes back and whispers to me every couple of years - I've come to think of it as my spirit guide. Although it terrifies me, it also reassures me in a weird kind of way. As long as it's around, I'll still be a writer and not just a drunk with weird ideas he can't express.

The bird's most recent appearance was last year, and the next morning I had an idea that fused my own history, my favorite movie and my bad habits into one coherent whole - BROKEN SIGIL, my Darkfuse novella is the most personal thing I've ever written. It's also among my favorites of all my works.

Will we talk about the black bird?


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## Kessie Carroll (Jan 15, 2014)

Reading these anecdotes is absolutely fascinating.

My Storm Chase/Chronocrime/Wraithblade stories are basically my husband's stories that I'm adapting into books. I don't know where he gets his ideas, but between us, we cook up some really crazy stuff. Like, I figured out the mechanics of what someone would DO with the ability to manipulate space and time, while he came up with the idea that working magic is like performing art. Working with space is like sewing, or sculpture, while gravity is manipulated through dance. Time magic is like weaving, or making complicated Cat's Cradle patterns in your fingers. The series has artistic leanings all through it.

My werewolf romance, Turned, came from pondering what happened behind the scenes in the World of Warcraft city of Gilneas. It was a walled, isolated city that had a werewolf outbreak, and there was nobody to help them. But somebody invented a potion that enabled the werewolves to retain their sanity. So I began wondering who invented that potion. And what would happen if the guy was an aristocratic alchemist, who was married to a socialite wife, and they had zero love in their marriage ... until after they're both bitten and become monsters?


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## Shei Darksbane (Jan 31, 2015)

Years and YEARS of roleplaying.

That's the answer to ALL my stories. 

We finally said "Hey, we should TELL some of these stories."

We always plotted our roleplays like a novel with all the proper structure and elements.
It lead to my wife and me being considered the best GM's of our area. 
We still get compliments from old players and we've had people newer to roleplaying tell us they've *heard of us* for our old games where we used to have a lot more players.
Now we mostly RP alone, but we started realizing that our stories could be told in ways that don't involve a group of people staying up all hours of the night with dice and character sheets.
So we're writing our best stories. 
And as for what inspired those stories exactly... Mostly a lot of other roleplaying.
But I know for my current story it was inspired by a lot of my wife's favorite Urban Fantasy elements and the desire to play a certain relationship dynamic as the main characters.
My wife's current story was inspired by our playing around with a little roleplaying system that generates cool space setting ideas handily and a heavy dose of our favorite space operas including Firefly, Mass Effect, and Star Trek DS9. I wanted to play a story "like Firefly" but it went way, way far afield from that very quickly.
Both of the stories deviate far from their influences, but the inspiration was definitely there.


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## ML-Larson (Feb 18, 2015)

Lay of Runes came from the stacks of Thor comics in my closet.  I'm not even going to pretend otherwise, since that's what first got me interested in Norse mythology.  As I read more into the mythology, and how Christianity changed the myths when they were finally recorded after centuries of oral tradition, I really wanted to explore the older interpretations, and get away from the strict Good/Evil dichotomy that you really see in the Eddas.  Loki's more of a pain in the neck than any kind of evil force, and the giants are just there doing their own thing.


My new series, which hasn't been published yet, came from watching a Minecraft playthrough; specifically, a playthrough of the Voltz mod.  I love those super high-tech mods, because you are still having to mine your own coal to power your dark matter production, and butcher cows for leather to insulate your cables, while at the same time firing anti-matter missiles at your neighbours.  When they set off a bomb that almost permanently crashed their server, it gave me a strange idea for alternate dimension shenanigans.


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## Navigator (Jul 9, 2014)

Not nearly enough smut in the niche I'm writing in.


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## Moist_Tissue (Dec 6, 2013)

A few years back, I was listening to Alison Krauss' version of Molly Ban. Something about the lyrics triggered my creativity, and I began to imagine the origin story behind the folk song. Since publishing my first novella, I have always thought about creating a series of Young Adult novels inspired by Irish folk songs.

Anyway... I attended Trinity College, Dublin. On Grafton Street, there was the statue of Molly Malone. I used to walk by it several times a week as it was near a Centra, a main bus line, and McDonalds. The folk song and statue always interested me so as I thought about the lyrics, my twisted mind created a different ending for ol' Molly.


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## William Meikle (Apr 19, 2010)

In TORMENTOR there's a lot of fish, some drums, some beer, a lot of whisky, dancing, some good weather, some bad weather, weird noises in the night and some Spaniards - among other things. Things like rhythm, and booze. 

This novella has been a long time in the making. The basic idea came to me way back in the '90s, but it took me a long, long time before I felt that my writing was up to the needs of the story. Then, last year, it all finally came together. - 

You see, I have a theory about how the world works - no, bear with me, this isn't a pseudo-science rant. Well, maybe it is - but it's something that's been on my mind for a while, and it has turned up in a lot of my stories of recent years.

We are creatures of rhythm and vibration. Not just us either, and not just the animal and plant kingdoms, but the whole of the universe. 

An earlier paragraph from another book sort of sums up the first part of my philosophy nicely.

"Life is an opportunity to create meaning by our actions and how we manage our way through the short part of infinity we're given to operate in. And once our life is finished, our atoms go back to forming other interesting configurations with those of other people, animals, plants and anything else that happens to be around, as we all roll along in one big, happy, ever dancing, universe."

It's the dance that's the thing, and our attempts to learn the steps and keep time with our partners is how we fumble through life.

Everything has a natural rhythm. The Earth spins once a day, goes around the sun once a year. The moon goes round the earth every 28 days. Your heart beats in a rhythm particular only to you. Everything has its drumbeat and everything contributes to the dance. You've just got to know when to lead and when to follow.

And sometimes, if you let go and let the rhythm do its thing, magic happens, and the rhythm gets into you and through you and off you go, careering along with no other thought than the dance, and the sheer overwhelming joy of it.

I know, I know... old hippie, right?

But what if you could see the rhythms, feel the beat?

Here's an experiment. Make a pendulum, I use a pocket watch on a chain, but a stone on the end of a bit of string will work just as well. 

Let it hang straight down, not moving. 

Put your hand below the pendulum. Palm up. 

The pendulum should start to move. First from side to side then slowly start to spin in a circle that widens until it  rotates slowly above your hand.

Take your hand away and the pendulum will stop moving.

Go away and try - I'll wait till you get back.

Okay?

Hold it over a beer or a coffee. It should swing in a much wider circle this time. 

Everything has a beat. Even beer.

You might have heard of this - it's often called dowsing. But if I understand it correctly, a dowsing rod responds to electromagnetic fields. This is more of a mechanism for accessing innate rhythms. Your unconscious makes slight adjustments to your muscles in response to the rhythms, and these are amplified and turned into rotational movement by spin vectors being produced in your fingertips. The same as dowsing, but different, if you get my meaning?

It will also answer questions. Your unconscious knows a lot more than it tells you, but you can fool it and get an answer using the pendulum. 

Test it.  Just let it hang and ask a question you know the answer to, it will respond with either a yes or no, true or false, depending on whether it turns clockwise or counterclockwise. Depending on the direction, you now have a way of asking other questions.

Yes, I know, more hippie stuff. But what if I'm right? Go on, try it. 

What's the worst thing that could happen?

All I know is that it works for me. And again, I know, it doesn't prove anything. 

But it is indicative of something. To quote the Bard, this is wondrous strange. It gives me a small, almost impossibly small, hope that there is more to life than just blood and flesh, that there might just be a point beyond staying alive as long as possible. 

There might even be dancing.

And, to return to my point, in TORMENTOR, the rhythms are dormant, waiting to be wakened, and when they do make themselves known, they are not recognized for what they are. 

The dancers take their time, finding the steps slowly, tentatively.

But in the end, we all dance together.


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## Miriam Minger (Nov 27, 2010)

It's been a while, but let's get this party started again!

What inspired you to write *your* latest book?


Miriam Minger


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## Guest (Apr 4, 2016)

Deviations started with a scene popping into my head, of a girl (eventually Miho) sitting on the edge of a cliff and two boys who approach her from behind and come to sit beside her, one holding each hand and kissing her cheeks, letting her know it would get better. That scene never really made it into the story, but it started the ball rolling 

The seed for my upcoming novel, Girl in the Forest (currently in revision), was inspired by watching the Vice documentary on Aokigahara Forest, along with my own curiosity about enjo kōsai, having it seen it referenced (or engaged in) in some manga series.


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## Jena H (Oct 2, 2011)

Miriam Minger said:


> It's been a while, but let's get this party started again!
> 
> What inspired you to write *your* latest book?
> 
> Miriam Minger


My latest completed book is non-fiction. I'd gotten hooked on an old vintage TV show from years (decades) ago, and found myself writing recaps and commentary about the episodes. Finally I thought to myself, "hey, Self, if you're going to spend all this time writing about this show--which has a cult following--you might as well publish it." So I did. Took three books.


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## Joseph J Bailey (Jun 28, 2013)

The inspiration for _Soul Stealer_ came while researching modern swordsmithing techniques.

I am a huge fan of finely crafted swords, particularly Japanese katanas. I dream about owning a true master's blade.

While reading about current bladesmiths, I found one craftsman who has created an improved form of Damascus steel. He calls his creations Angel Swords.

What if angels guarded the world wielding holy swords? What if these angels were defeated by the legions of Chaos and angelic swords fell from the sky? After the Fall, what if those swords were all that stood between humanity and hordes of demons? What if one of those swords was picked up by a mushroom farmer whose best friend just so happened to be a pet rock?

My curiosity led me to answer a series of questions.

I just tried to have fun with the answers.


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## Linn (Feb 2, 2016)

Miriam Minger said:


> It's been a while, but let's get this party started again!
> 
> What inspired you to write *your* latest book?
> 
> Miriam Minger


While watching Jumanji at some point back in 1996, I was inspired to try creating a story about a young girl who finds herself in a position of authority. The first challenge was deciding on the nature of her authority, and in the beginning I tossed around several different ideas. After considering Family Business, Royal Daughter, and Military story lines, I determined Royal Daughter was the most marketable, while Military seemed like the most compelling. So like a fool I chose compelling over marketable. Luckily for me I still have a day job.


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## sstroble (Dec 16, 2013)

Inspiration for Battling the Big CA came from getting malignant melanoma and the resulting cast of hundreds met as a result.


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## RN_Wright (Jan 7, 2014)

When I got to the end of _Space Ranger_ (the 4th episode) I almost inadvertently created a cliffhanger ending. So naturally I had to write another episode, _Space Outlaw_ -- which is almost ready to release.


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## Miriam Minger (Nov 27, 2010)

Hi everyone!  I apologize for the hiatus, but I'm back on Kboards, woohoo!

What's the inspiration behind *your* book?

The inspiration for my latest book, My Forbidden Duchess, Book 3 in The Man of My Dreams Series, was a tugging at my heart to write the next youngest sister's story, Marguerite.  Have you felt a similar tug to finish your work in progress or to write the next book in a series?

~Miriam


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## Gertie Kindle (Nov 6, 2008)

Miriam Minger said:


> Hi everyone! I apologize for the hiatus, but I'm back on Kboards, woohoo!
> 
> What's the inspiration behind *your* book?
> 
> ...


I wrote a three-year old in Listen to Your Heart (Jackie) and fell in love with her. It took me four years to get around to writing The Bold Heart, Jackie's story. She's still one of my favorite characters.


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## RN_Wright (Jan 7, 2014)

Since my last post on this thread I published two episodes and gathered all six into _Orlo's Orbits_ and then published that. The whole series came about as something to hitch onto the first sentence of the first episode. 

I'm working on a sequel now. It's a slow boat.


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## Spin52 (Sep 6, 2015)

My latest series came about because my cousin kept nagging me to "write something set in England", but after 33 years in the UK, I still feel like an outsider and not confident enough to set a contemporary book there. So I am writing a series set in the 1860s, in the west Oxfordshire area where I live, and told from the viewpoint of someone who is also an outsider, in his case because of his religion.


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## Miriam Minger (Nov 27, 2010)

Thanks for the posts, RN_Wright and Spin52!  Hope the writing process goes well for both of you.  It's a mysterious thing we do as authors, yes?

Have a great writing week!

~Miriam Minger


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## Douglas Milewski (Jul 4, 2014)

The inspiration for the Maid Of series (forthcoming) came from the Swan Song series. What were the hero's servants up to in the last book? What was supposed to be a novella expanded into 250,000 words. I never suspected that my most undeveloped character would have an epic backstory of epic epicness without actually becoming an epic fantasy. 

Crystal Hope (forthcoming) came from playing too many JPRGs. Once I noticed the all the tropes and structures, I thought that writing a story in that style would be fun, and wow, was I right. I got to throw in magic, mecha, giant robots, wuxia, flying ships, and kaiju all at the same time and hit puree. Whoohoo!

I hope it sells. And if it doesn't, I may write more anyway because the series has been just that fun.


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## Douglas Milewski (Jul 4, 2014)

Miriam Minger said:


> Thanks for the posts, RN_Wright and Spin52! Hope the writing process goes well for both of you. It's a mysterious thing we do as authors, yes?
> 
> Have a great writing week!
> 
> ~Miriam Minger


By GOD I love your branding. That was money well spent.


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## Rose Andrews (Jun 1, 2017)

It depends on which book you're inquiring about.  

My ideas come from seemingly nowhere. Ok...so mostly video games. Widow was inspired by Fallout 4. I'm shallow.


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## LittleFox (Jan 3, 2015)

Like Rosie. A said - it depends on which book you mean.   


The Ink Born books came from my love of tattoos, magic, and huge fantasy kitchen sink worlds. The Hidden Alchemy books are from my love of adventure and deep wanderlust. I wanted to write a book that made readers feel like the movie Stardust makes me feel. I'm pretty confident I achieved that in Seers Stone.


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## AA.A (Sep 6, 2012)

A painting drawn by my talented mother is behind my latest novel "The Boy of the Mosque"

It will be launched in December.

You can find it below:

https://www.instagram.com/p/BQLfY2RjtTf/


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## Miriam Minger (Nov 27, 2010)

Happy New Year! Happy New Decade! 2020 has a wonderful ring to it, don't you think?

Let's start this decade off right by sharing the inspiration behind *your* latest book!

Me, I'm currently writing sweet historical romance, Walker Creek Brides, so my readers have a choice of sweet and/or sensual in my books. Here's Kari, Book 1 of Walker Creek Brides:



So, what is inspiring you to write these days?

~Miriam Minger


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## chrisstevenson (Aug 10, 2012)

I wondered what the heck was on the inside of a dream catcher world.


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## DCRWrites (Jan 20, 2014)

For my current book, it was Ancient Aliens--Giorgio was going on like a nutter and everyone started talking about Annunaki and there it was. From there it's just gotten weirder.


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## Linn (Feb 2, 2016)

While watching videos of the Magic Kingdom's new fireworks show, Happily Ever After, I noticed their placement of Alice seemed a little odd. She pops up during a segment of the show that is pretty much dedicated to heroic characters like Hercules and Mulan. So I decided to create a story in which she does something to earn a place in that segment: _Alice and the Blade of Spring_. And now the show is much more accurate. You're welcome, Disney. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jB0Afdy68GM


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## C. Gold (Jun 12, 2017)

My husband told me about a weird dream he had, so for a gift, I wrote the "Where's My Wife?" story for him. To make it work, I blended Urban Fantasy with GameLit elements. He said it was the best story I've ever written, so I'm guessing he liked his present!


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## rchapman1 (Dec 5, 2012)

We have the most beautiful Poinciana trees where I live and last year I decided a Poinciana tree would look great on a book cover - thus The Poinciana Tree.  I started with the idea for the cover and built a story around it.


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## Jena H (Oct 2, 2011)

rchapman1 said:


> We have the most beautiful Poinciana trees where I live and last year I decided a Poinciana tree would look great on a book cover - thus The Poinciana Tree. I started with the idea for the cover and built a story around it.


That _is_ a beautiful tree.

you wrote a book to match a picture. I wrote a book based only on a simple title. I love shiny, sparkly things, so I thought I'd write a book titled Shiny, Sparkly Things. (It has a pretty generic cover right now, but one day I'm going to get a cover to match the branding of the other books in the series.)


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## L.E.Glazebrook (Dec 9, 2019)

I've always been perplexed at how perfectly normal, or what we would usually call "good" people, could do sinister things. 
As a child I would ask, "Why?" but no one could really give me an adequate answer. So as an adult, I read a lot to try to understand more of the world around me.

I recall reading an horrific news item online on the same day that I read about a creepy urban legend to beware of black eyed children, and how you must NEVER let them in to your house, regardless of their pleas.
This resulted in one of my most vivid nightmares I'd had in years. My poor husband almost had a heart attack when I awoke screaming and in a lather of sweat...

I was compelled to write it all down and it materialized as my first novel, _The Jezebels of Bedlam_.


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## VisitasKeat (Oct 15, 2018)

L.E.Glazebrook said:


> I've always been perplexed at how perfectly normal, or what we would usually call "good" people, could do sinister things.
> As a child I would ask, "Why?" but no one could really give me an adequate answer. So as an adult, I read a lot to try to understand more of the world around me.
> 
> I recall reading an horrific news item online on the same day that I read about a creepy urban legend to beware of black eyed children, and how you must NEVER let them in to your house, regardless of their pleas.
> ...


How about keeping a pouch of black eyed peas near the front door, alongside the bed, or, in the car? Just a suggestion to rid the nightmares or the mythical demon itself.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black-eyed_children

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black-eyed_pea


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## rchapman1 (Dec 5, 2012)

My first book, Missing in Egypt, was inspired by a holiday in Egypt - what a great place to set a mystery!


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## davisbates (Dec 27, 2017)

Hah!

WB Yeats was having a conversation with some other poets.  He said, 'People like to THINK that they like poetry.'

Or B Dylan sang about 'you'd put my head in a guillotine.'  In other words, I completely doubt that the people who read my books are at all interested in the writer, not really. The desire to keep civilization alive like the Irish monks of the Dark Ages might not sit well. Nor would they enjoy learning that I'm determined not to further New Speak or decrease attention spans. That I 'even' spurn tv.


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## dm_pb_tx (Feb 7, 2012)

This is an interesting thread that has lasted from 2011.

Every one of my 3 published novels (2 in the works) have germinated from specific items of interest.

*BAD VIBE*: I had read an article in a science magazine about the latest knowledge concerning man-made worm-holes. That was coupled with the ZPE (zero point energy) modules from the TV show Stargate:SG1.

*IDIMMU*: was based on my fascination with Psychomanteums and True-Mirrors.

*PORTAL*: was based on a new medical procedure, quantum science and the suffering of epileptics.

My 2 novels in progress:

*THE FOUR LEG SOLUTION*: comes from a promise to myself that I would somehow produce something that was a tribute to my beloved deceased dogs, and telepathy.

*DUSTER*: has Psychokinesis as it's hook. Also one mans journey to become a psi-assasin and his personal journey from bad man to good man.

DCM


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## Jena H (Oct 2, 2011)

dm_pb_tx said:


> This is an interesting thread that has lasted from 2011.
> 
> Every one of my 3 published novels (2 in the works) have germinated from specific items of interest.
> 
> ...


Just wanted to <squee!> at the Stargate reference.  Carry on......


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## dm_pb_tx (Feb 7, 2012)

"Indeed."


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## Ted Cross (Aug 30, 2012)

My fantasy novel The Shard was my first. I had it percolating in my brain for about 25 years and never thought I'd ever actually write it. It was based on my teen love of playing Dungeons & Dragons. I had what I thought was a really cool adventure with great characters, but I believed it was just a dream. Then when I read A Game of Thrones by GRRM, it hit me that I really did want to write my story. Or at least see if I could. I typed out one chapter and enjoyed it, so from that point on it flowed.

My second book, the sci-fi The Immortality Game, came from the first. I had a wizard character in The Shard that I had posited was the only wizard on the planet because he was actually a Russian scientist who had come to this planet from Earth, and those arrivals from Earth were the only people on the planet capable of 'seeing' and interacting with the lines of energy caused by the red moon. I found his backstory fascinating and it stuck in my head, so eventually I started writing it, and it became my bestselling novel. I don't think most readers realize the fantasy and the sci-fi are related to each other, though.

My collection of short stories, Lord Fish, was just that, short stories I wrote about characters in my other books in order to help me understand them better.


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## Jena H (Oct 2, 2011)

dm_pb_tx said:


> "Indeed."


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## slowsmile (Jan 18, 2020)

The inspiration for my first two non-fiction books -- _Candida:Killing So Sweetl_y and _pH Balanced for Life_ -- were really as a result of disease that hit me when I left UK and became a retired expat living somewhere in Asia. I realized that I had systemic candida(fungus in the blood), it was serious and and it was debilitating and ruining my life. I felt tired and awful all the time. Through the considerable help of a Thai healing guru and my own self-research, I completely cured myself of Candida(I can eat anything I like now -- even milk, wheat, carbohydrates and sugar). And I cured myself without using drugs or consulting doctors who are generally no help at with fungal diseases like candida. The Thai naturopath's name is Napatulung Parhatsathid, but he always insisted that we just call him Ted from Bangkok. After I was cured, I had learned a great deal about natural herbs and functional medicine from the Thai healing guru so I decided to give something back and try and help people who had serious candida issues that wouldn't go away or just couldn't be cured by doctors or drugs. So I started helping people on a website called EarthClinic. Eventually I wrote the two books above, which were both the result of having healed and cured my own serious systemic candida issues.

My other book -- _How to Publish Books and eBooks with Kindle Create_ -- came into being because I'm an old techy guy. I was a programmer in my past life and I still right the odd program or plugin now and again. I'm also a member of the Kindle Community Forum and saw alot of people having problems with Kindle Create. I wondered why they were having problems -- it's just a point and click app. I've been using Kindel Create, almost on a daily basis, ever since it was released in January 2017. Well, some people like to do crosswords or play golf or whatever. Me? I like techy stuff. I can also produce books in epub format, but I regarded Kindle Create as a true godsend for non-techy indie authors out there who don't want to learn or cannot learn html. So I decided to help them and wrote an in-depth and complete step-by-step Kindle Create guide. It was released last week and I'm having a well-earned rest from it all now.


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## wearywanderer64 (Jan 27, 2013)

'Jake of all trades' came about when I got the bus through Govan, Glasgow every day and saw the variety of shops there. Among them was an (agency, for want of a better word) that offered a mishmash of services, including private investigation work. I started thinking, what if it was a chancer who worked out of there? You know, a working class guy who wanted to work for himself but didn't have the qualifications. Then  I thought of a jailbird and from that came the idea of a biker, then a Hell's Angel, just out of jail, who's used to living on the edge. All the authorities can do is shut him down and he's be back to square one, which is nothing to him as that's where he's always been. Throw in a love interest, a few moral codes, and voila, you've got a real rough-cut hero.

'The Danger list' came about after speaking to a relative who's a detective. He said police work was being outsourced to agencies. Throw in a female agency worker born abroad, paired up with a guy who's pale, stale and chauvinist, and you've got the ingredients of a toxic relationship and situation.


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