Writing is just plain fun.  Where else can you be umpteen hundred different people and not have to live in a padded room to justify them LOL.  Two of the questions I get asked the most as an author are “Where do you get your ideas?” and “Is there any part of yourself in your writing?” so I thought I’d share some of the answers from a few of my stories.

I’ll even start with my very first e-book published, The Theory of Love.  The idea for the story actually came from my life.  You see, my best friend and I are total opposites and one of our ongoing discussions has been about love.  I’ve always believed in soul mates and various forms of love at first sight where my friend believed in stability, status, and bank accounts (side note so I don’t get into trouble: bank accounts as in comfortable—not scraping for every nickel and dime—not old rich men LOL).  Being a romance writer, could you blame me for taking advantage and making it into a story?  Though I could never change her mind, the cool thing about being an author is that you can write your own version of how things should be.  In the Theory of Love, I did just that!

My novella, Love Floats was written for a contest where a garden needed to be the focal point off the story.  Right from the start, I wanted to make the garden in an unusual location, which brought to mind the idea of a landscaper having to build a garden where no land existed—on a boat.  Here again, my own life comes into play.  I had no issues writing about gardening (even though my thumb is as black as coal where plants are concerned) because my mother is a great gardener AND she and my father used to live on a boat.  (I’m not lying about the black thumb either—when my parents moved onto the boat, I inherited their apartment and, no matter how hard I tried, ended up destroying all her houseplants.)  Also, during the writing of Love Floats, which is a whole other story on its own LOL, I remembered a fun childhood memory of getting fish and chips from a small seaside shack and eating on a little stretch of beach when we lived in British Columbia.  Since the story revolved around a boat, I went ahead and used this setting for one of the important scene.

Now, Shadows of Moonlight is about a vampire and a psychic.  Okay, I’m obviously neither so what part of me comes into a story like that you ask?  The internal parts.  The idea came from my beliefs in reincarnation and true love.  Through Merrick and Liz’s confrontation comes my own views on the definition of a monster (yep, you’re going to have to read the story if you’d like to know *g*).

I’ll round this up with Cheatin’ Hearts.  The part of me that made it into the story is my weakness for cowboys.  What a fun story to write!  The idea came from a challenge issued by one of the editors at The Wild Rose Press where she wanted a story about a lost Stetson.  Well, I sometimes have a problem coming up with a story when given a specific topic versus one that comes naturally from my own sensibly insane musings. 

Cheatin’ Hearts is a perfect example.  I was rather immersed in another story at the time but I still tried to come up with something, anything—without success.  Then two months later, while in the shower, a song popped into my head—The Chair by George Strait.  BOOM, with shampoo running down my grinning face, the story came to me.  Though the song was the inspiration, I had fun twisting the whole concept around.  I then checked with the editor and she told me to go ahead and write it.  Two weeks later, I could literally hear the laughter in her email.  She loved it and laughed out loud along with another editor.  My aim is to make people feel—love, laughter, tears if need be—and it truly has to be the best thing about writing for me to have someone tell me they laughed out loud while reading one of my stories because there is a little piece of me in every one. 

Stacy Dawn

Thank you so much for sharing this Stacy!