Her topic is something I think every reader has asked an author; where do you find your ideas? Stacey shares where she found ideas for several of her books.
This is an often-asked question of many writers, so I thought I’d share how some of my books came to be. Ideas can come from anywhere…a bad situation, a good day with family, and an overheard conversation at the next table while at the coffee shop. Writers are notorious for people watching and listening.
My Christmas novella, Dragonfly Dreams, was born after a conversation that I participated in at one of my parents’ rummage sales. A man told us about when he was a kid; he’d been paid for some yard work for an older woman with an old rifle of her late-husband’s. He in turn took the rifle to a pawnshop and was thrilled to get an awesome price. (I vaguely recall it being around $100-150). Not long after, he and his family read in the paper that the pawnshop owner had sold a mint-condition WWI rifle for over $200,000.00. I took the idea of the story, of how losing that much money could affect someone in a desperate situation, but changed the details by using an antique broach and then added different historical twist.
This next book came about a bit backwards. I heard the Milwaukee area country band Chasin’ Mason and thought it’d be a great title for a book. All I had to do is figure out who Mason was, and why was someone chasin’ him? I then dedicated the book to the band. Someday, I’ll even get a copy to them.
For another book, I drew upon personal experience. Almost fifteen years ago, on my first (and only) international trip, I was left on the side of the road in Italy by my traveling companions…my brother and sister. See, I was busy with my new video camera, and they were more concerned about getting to our hotel. They finally came back after more than twenty nerve-wracking minutes (remember-first time out of the USA and I didn’t speak Italian), and I had a story to tell for life. People still can’t believe they just drove off without me and it took them over ten minutes to realize I wasn’t in the back seat. You might think it was revenge for something I’d done when we were kids *grin*, but really, my sister was crying when they got back, because she was afraid they’d dragged me as I was trying to get into the car. Nope, I was still filming swans on the lake as they zoomed off into traffic. The book isn’t published yet, so I won’t go into detail except to say the heroine had a much more exciting adventure than me. She’s kidnapped by a movie star and her family is held for ransom by the real bad guys. Tentative title: Lost in Italy.
Trust in the Lawe is a sequel written to my very first romance, so nothing too exciting there other than wanting to stay connected to my ‘friends’, Joel and Britt. But the characters in the next book, Shattered Trust, were partly shaped by a work negotiation training that I participated in for my day job as a Travel Agent. I learned different power techniques during negotiations that can give people an edge, so I made sure that my heroine applied them when the hero unjustly fired her and then had to go back to apologize and offer her job back.
If Tombstones Could Talk, a paranormal novella, came about from me seeing a local event in the newspaper about a cemetery walking tour, and most recently, I heard about one of those strange laws in a local town that when you hear it you think, “Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me!” It gave me an idea for the beginning of the story, and though I’m still working out the details, I plan to get writing soon!
Ideas abound in just about anything we see, do, hear, and even dream. This is a great thing; it means the well should never go dry. But on the other hand, sometimes I get so many ideas I don’t even bother writing them down because I know I’ll never have the time to write them all. The ones that really catch linger in my mind get written in a notebook. Someday I will get to them.
Question: If you're a writer, where do you get your ideas? Readers, have you ever had an idea you'd love to see written as a book or movie?
Stacy has to work today but she will be stopping by once she's finished.
Trust in The Lawe Blurb
Kendra Zelner has three brothers: Eight-year old Noah she's determined to protect, Joel who has no clue she exists, and Robert who wants her dead.
With reason to be distrustful of cops, she takes Noah and flees their Manhattan home for Joel's ranch in Colorado. Under the pretense of needing a job, she plans to hide out until her twenty-fifth birthday, when she'll inherit her trust fund and legally gain custody of Noah away from Robert's greedy hands. Unfortunately, her brother's sexy, infuriating ranch manager insists on demolishing her defenses and digging into her past.
Colton Lawe has good reason to suspect Joel's beautiful, long-lost sister isn't what she seems—the little liar stole from him! He silently vows to expose her secrets, but long hours together on the ranch fosters a closeness and fiery attraction neither of them expects. Can Kendra trust Colton with the full truth before Robert finds them? Excerpt and Night Owl Top Pick Review.
Buy: Amazon. Barnes and Noble
An avid reader and lover of movies with happy endings, Stacey still lives in WI, with her husband and three children, a couple horses and some barn cats. In her limited free time she enjoys gardening and canning, and visiting her parents up north at the cabin on the lake with the whole family.
You can keep up with Stacey and her writing: Facebook and Website.
