Of Muses and Dreams (How I got the idea for my new novel)

One of the questions I get asked most is where the ideas come from. Usually, an idea starts as a spark.  A simple "what if," that grows as it knocks around the noggin.  If the spark isn't that interesting, I'll eventually forget about it and move on.  It's the ideas that percolate and persist that end up on the page.

For the most part anyway.

The Bridge Between Stars was a little different. It began as a dream I had back in the summer of 2009.  The dream was vivid and felt real, and it stayed with me upon waking, and I wrote it all down. I wrote about images I'd seen, the sounds I heard.  The docks.  The lapping water.  The reflection of the night sky.  the burning cities.  The invaders.  Something about the dream was important to me, but I couldn't place it. 

Half a dozen years passed until I was ready to flesh out the story.  I had attempted to write it several times before, but each time I felt that I wasn't ready.  Until now.

There is still something very personal about this story.  Something very important, and I think the timing for this story in our world is just about perfect.

Below, I've pasted the exact words I wrote upon waking from the dream, nearly a decade ago  (typos and all).  The idea for The Bridge Between Stars came from this:

From A dream I had 7/21/09

the days before the endd--live beneath in the tunnels--RED graffiti everywhere

warriors coming, Aztec?--feathers, clubs, swords--BRUTAL illusions?

(desolation))

Warriors are supernatural--no one believes in God, or anything

 the warriors slaughter their victims--no survivors.

Family (group of people) w/ small children--twins??

Maybe MOm comes in from another City, saying that the warriors are

coming--then she is killed.  (Warrior is blury?? in the shadows--it is the spirit of a warrior sent to finish off the

victim--can only finish what the physical warrior started) 

RED HUES

leave.  north

hear drums all around, FIRE.  cities burning. skylines with smoke and red glows.  sun doesn't rise. ash like snow.

north

Family flees --YELLOW hues, even in MOON LIGHT, like

mars, otherworldly--warriors hunt them.

They follow the paths, climbing high into the yellow, shale mountains.

Higher and higher, to the top of the mountains--climb through a crust of snow)

train going north

--BLUE HUES--beautiful blue--serene

docks from the banks of the lake/ocean.  maze of docks.

water is calm.

I can see stars in the water.

Ocean, lakes, at the top (Wierd, like death valley)--surrounded by

mountains and glaciers, and ice.  ALWAYS NIGHT, DARK BLUE HUES.

White caps on the water, waves--docks running everywhere--like a maze

of docks.  rickety, some painted, some not--some only big enough for a

few people. The run on the docks.  The warriors hunt.

North.

The finished product is more polished than these notes (as we would hope), but the themes remain in this dark apocalyptic thriller.

So, where do you get your ideas?

***

Pre-order The Bridge Between Stars for the Kindle!

Chaos reigns. Fear and terror run rampant. War is inevitable.

An ancient tribe of primitive people rises to save the world from its own destruction.

At least, that’s what we think…

The Bridge Between Stars is a nightmare come to life. A haunting tale of a family’s will to survive at all costs, even when hope is lost, and a love that spans galaxies.

Monarch: Chapter One

The next chapter of my serial novel, Monarch, has been posted on over at the Campfire. Click here to keep reading.

I remember working on this chapter like it was yesterday.  My oldest daughter had just been born and she would wake up during the night, as babies sometimes do.  Once I was awake, it would take me awhile to fall back to sleep, so I would write a few pages.  It was during the night, when our house was quiet, and it was just me and the story, that I fell in love with writing.  I would look forward to those quiet moments, when I would be whisked away into strange and exciting worlds.  Stories and the creation of stories had always been a part of my life, but it was while I wrote these pages that it became a passion.

What are some of your passions?  Share in the comments below!

Inspirations (1)

“Where do you get your ideas?”  Is probably the question that I get asked most often, when it comes to writing.  (If it’s not about writing, the question is usually, “why are you so weird?”  And my answer to that is always: dill pickles.)

I’ve read other author blogs and been to author events where this question comes up time and time again.  Authors can’t answer the question because there is no real answer.  Mostly, ideas just come.   Stephen King once said that he gets his ideas from “everything,” and as vague as that is, he nailed it.  Ideas are floating around us all and every once in awhile, these “floating ideas” light the creative fires in your mind. 

In my novel, Impish, the ball got rolling with one of the most bizarre true stories that I’ve heard in my life.  I heard the story while I was clerking at a law firm during law school.  One of my fellow clerks, a smart and funny girl with a dicey track record for recognizing social dos and don’ts, recounted her experience in taking the LSAT.

She had to take the test twice.  The first time she sat down to take the test, she was excited and nervous.  She started answering the questions. About an hour or so into the test, she suddenly got that old, familiar signal from her bladder that she would soon have to leave the room.

Now, for those of you who haven’t had the pleasure of familiarizing yourself with the LSAT, the trickiest part about that test is the time limit.  Most of the questions can be figured out, if given enough time.  But the test is designed to force you to come up with answers very quickly, and even if you are very quick with your responses, it can still be difficult to answer all the questions in time. 

A couple minutes passed for my friend, who tried her best to ignore the calls of nature, when she realized that this feeling that her bladder was going to explode is not going away.  She knew that if she got up to go to the bathroom, she might not be able to finish the test in time, but she also knew that if she stayed, she would soon be sitting in a puddle.  The decision was a difficult one, and in the end, rather than take a quick bathroom break and do her best to finish the test, she calmly stood up, turned in her test, and signed the form that indicated her forfeiture of her score.

A few months later, she was back in the testing center for round two.  Not wanting to face a similar predicament, she emptied her bladder several times before the test even started, and wore an adult diaper, just in case.

Yep, you read that right.  She wore an adult diaper so that she wouldn’t have to miss any of those precious minutes using the restroom.  Now, I know that people sometimes have to do extraordinary things—like that guy in the fantastic 127 Hours— to survive, and I know that there are people who genuinely need assistance with adult diapers (and I’m not poking fun at that), rather, the situation was so awkward that I could hardly come up with a response.

When I asked her, as discreetly as possible, if she actually had to use the diaper, she just smiled, and wouldn’t say.  From then on, she became known in my mind as the girl who didn’t play with fire or go around kicking hornet’s nests, but instead, chose to wear a diaper. 

The summer ended and we went our separate ways, keeping in touch occasionally, but that story stuck with me.  It became one of the seeds that eventually evolved into my new novel, Impish.

The girl who wore the diaper became a central character in Impish—a friend to the guy who accidently sells his soul to hell.  I wanted to capture the academic passion someone could have, and all the eccentricities that would come along with it.

So, usually dill pickles, but in this case, a crazy story about refusing to take a bathroom break during a test.  Check out Impish: A Comedy of Horrors.