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

[Miriam Minger]

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

[Dan Holloway]

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.

[Bob Mayer]

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?

[Miriam Minger]

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

[Beatriz]

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

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

[Edward C. Patterson]

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

[Nathan Lowell]

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.

[Raybrite]

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.)

[Carol R]

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.

[YK Greene]

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.

[DavidRM]

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

[JoeMitchell]

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.

[Rai Aren]

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

[SuzanneTyrpak]

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?

[Vianka Van Bokkem]

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




-Vianka Van Bokkem

[Vivi_Anna]

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.

[Miriam Minger]

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

[JD Rhoades]

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.  

[Carolyn J. Rose, Mystery Writer]

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.

[williammeikle]

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.

[Amanda Brice]

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.

[foreverjuly]

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

[Sarah Nasello]

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.

[williammeikle]

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 :-)

[Ashley Lynn Willis]

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.