When people find out you’re a writer, you can get a mixed bag of reactions. 

Sometimes it’s:

“Oh, have you sold anything yet?”

Well, it’s kind of hard to write for a living without actually having sold a book. 

Other times, I get:

“So do you write kids books?

Um, no.  This usually comes from people who know me in RL/real life—I did pediatric nursing for years and yes, I adore kids.  That doesn’t mean I’d know how to write for a younger audience.  I’d probably be terrible at it.

Another one?

“Do you have a book in bookstores?”

Yep.  I do.  Actually several.

There are various rude ones that I’m not going to go into. 

And then… the whopper.  The one that I’m hardly ever able to answer without sounding like a moron.

“Where do you get your ideas from?”

I tell you… I hear this question and I want to wince, flinch, whimper and hide my face.  Why?  Now, if you’re not a writer, it might not seem like a hard question.   But for a writer, at least some of us?  Well, it’s not like we’re just going to a store and picking out clothes, or even going into a bookstore and selecting a book.

Sometimes the ideas are everywhere, nowhere, and right in between.  Sometimes you wake up with one riding your brain and it won’t shut up until you get it down on paper or screen.  Other times, it will sit in the back of the head, germinating for months or years, taking shape without you fully thinking about.

But where do they come from?  Well… life.

Even if we’re not fighting vampires, having a rendezvous with a billionaire doctor, crossing through some unseen gateway into another world, or traveling through space with a sexy linguist, something we see in our everyday life inspires our ideas.  It sparked something that led to an idea, and ideas leads to books.

The other day, I read a quote from Neil Gaiman who summed it up
quite well:

And life is a good thing for a writer. It's where we get our raw material, for a start. We quite like to stop and watch it.

That nails it…right there.  Life is raw material, and it’s where we get all those little somethings that turn into sparks that turn into ideas that turn into books.

My ideas come from something in my life.  The barest spark—it can be a TV show, a documentary about a pride of lions, it can be a dream, it can be a discussion with my husband about a bruise—yep, a bruise. 

The first book in my Veil series all started with a bruise—the
heroine was always waking with bruises, I bruise easy… the spark of that idea all came from my husband—he’s the one person I’ll take ideas from, but the story itself, the characters grew from him, something he said to me, and from there, the idea took on a life of its own.  And it’s because of something that happened in my life—a bruise I’d gotten from God only knows where.

But when you try to tell people that just life is an idea?  Sometimes they look at you weird.  Or maybe they look at me weird because I am weird…

But seriously, for me, there’s nothing terribly glamorous or insightful about where a writer gets ideas from.  It can be kind of cool, though—like when your guy says something that makes you go… hmmmmm, or when you’re sitting at a stoplight and bam, lightning strike.  Might not be glamorous, but it works and I like it when things work.

And because I wouldn’t be doing my good little authorly duty if I
didn’t mention my latest-my latest is the second book in my Veil series, Veil of Shadows, a mix of fantasy, paranormal, action and romance.  It was a lot of fun to write, even if I did feel like smacking the characters sometimes….

With demons running amok throughout the forests and mountains, a rebel army has been established to win back the land—and a new soldier has appeared out of nowhere to join them.

His name is Xan, and his past is a mystery to everyone, including Laisyn Caar—a beautiful captain in the rebel army—who is shocked by the powerful, all-consuming desire she feels in his presence.

But now isn’t the time for distraction. The future of her land—and of her people—is in her hands. On top of that, she’s been stripped of her magic—and without it she feels like part of her soul has been stolen away.

But when she discovers the dark secrets of Xan’s agenda, it will be up to her to determine whether the man she’s starting to love is a friend of her people—or a dreaded enemy…

 

And I will close my authorly duty by saying that if you’re interested, you can read an excerpt at my site… http://www.shilohwalker.com/

Thanks for hanging around and reading through my rambles…

Shiloh Walker