Life's Interference Sunday, October 08, 2006

It's an interesting puzzle to me that I want to write but life is coming at me fast and furious. However, without my life, I would have nothing to write about. It's my limited knowledge of people that gives me plots and ideas.
We laugh about that question that famous authors hear. "Where do you get your ideas?" The truth is I can sum it up in a nutshell. I get my ideas all around me. The idea for "Heart of the Storm" came from a story that my husband told about a fishing boat that went down and fifteen years later, one of the crew showed up wanted for a crime in another state. The idea sparked into an Alaskan crab fishing adventure (since I love that stuff) and I prodded and poked my hubby for information. (He's an ex-fisherman).
I often write people that I know (or parts of them) and it's usually to kill them off. People inspire me. All kinds of people. There's the old fisherman, Pogie, who is based on several older men I know. There's the "Goth girl" I wrote in "Perfect" that reminds me so much of my best friends' daughter. If it weren't for the people around me and the things that happen to them, I'd have no voice. So, when life comes at me at a fast pace, I just close my eyes and remember it's all fodder for a future best seller.
I joke that I write romantic suspense because I kept trying to write romance and dead bodies kept turning up. That's the truth. I love to add danger and tension to a story. My ideas come from people, from life. I look around and there's the man who wasn't loved by his parents, the woman who runs from relationships because they frighten her, the overprotective mother and the dominating father. I take bits and pieces and tada! There's my story.
This week, as life pounds on me, I'll be getting ideas for lots of books. After all, everything can be useful to a writer.
I'll bet you can't guess the question. Where do you get your ideas? Newspapers? Real life? Or just from your imagination?