How Do You Come up with Ideas for Your Novels?

Where do you come up with this stuff?

Honestly? It’s more like ‘How do I shut this stuff off.’

Can you elaborate?

Sure. I can give you a few. ‘A Witch to Die For’ started as a sexy daydream, where guy meets girl, during summer solstice. Then the ‘what-if’s’ kick in. What if he’s a witch and they need to make a witchy connection. What if she doesn’t know how? What if his family offers to train her? What if she’s really powerful and someone else wants her?

Another one?
What if…This geeky girl got this hard drive from a long lost brother who’s nothing but trouble?

Yet another?
What if…That key in my purse was really to a safety deposit box, and someone, desperate to be rid of it, dropped it there after a murder.

And so my mind goes

Wow. So how do you turn that into a novel?

At first it was pretty random. But now that I’ve studied the craft, I’ve started to formalize the process. Most important is ‘Goal, Motivation, and Conflict’. There’s a lot of really great articles out there, so if you’re interested on how-to, I might suggest to Google it.

But your first series, is medieval. Are you a history buff?

Not any more than most. What I like to do is put myself in some scene, and describe it. What if I lived in a drafty stone building? How would I warm up? What would I do to make it nicer? People are people. They want to be comfortable.

How did you figure out all the details in your book?

Google Search is an amazing thing.