Where Do My Ideas Come From - Part 3 of 3

Apologies for my neglecting this blog this week. I've been in quite the spin. The good news is that Pretentious 4, is almost ready for the editor. With the holiday season just kicking off, I'm already busy, but can't wait for FantasyCon, the Halloween parties, and the holiday party for my street team, all happening in the next few weeks. I have a lot of good things planned for this blog in the near future, including some of the old style, character to character interviews - so stay tuned.

This is the final installment for where my ideas come from. You may have realized by now that they came from all over. The idea for Pretentious came when I was on a chick flick spree. Stories about entertainment, dancing, acting. No one specific story kicked it off. It was more of a 'pieces of reality that you see in the business' kind of thing, blended with fiction. You may think I'm being a touch evasive, but to divulge more here would be a big spoiler, and I can't do that to my fans who are making their way through the series. My husband and I were also working on a CD when the idea came to me, and I called a friend familiar with world tours, and he blew the story up a little bit more, and helped me hash out some of the issues I had at the time. Pretentious was not meant to be a serial, but as the story progresses there are a lot of characters. I sincerely felt like this method would serve the story, and reader, better.

For my upcoming stories:

One with the Dragon came from an image. I always have a lot of ideas, but I was at a lull and a friend sent me pages and pages of fantasy dragon images. Another image of a woman standing on a cliff edge gave me my plot.

Little Match Girl: I've always wanted to write the novel to Hans Christian Anderson's tale, and it's sitting on the backburner right now. My friend Aubrey Wynne, helped me hash the plot out. She writes awesome Christmas stories. Check her out here; http://www.amazon.com/Aubrey-Wynne All the research I've had to do for Reflections and The Carriage played a huge part too.

The Covens of Misty Haven: I can't remember where I got the idea for that story, but some ideas come to me like a download. This was probably one of them. Another friend, Harry Vossen, helped me plot out the legend for this one. So while the story is modern, it also has a complete history. We had a lot of fun. Harry is one of my go to's whenever I'm having trouble, and he never lets me down. He also helped with my dragon story, along with one of the most wonderful poets I've met,who critiqued it from beginning to end. I won't name her because she's an extremely private person. Check out Harry Vossen here:  Http://www.harryvossen.com. You'll find he is very much a Terry Pratchett fan.

I have another novella on the backburner, and a novel I've began numerous times, and while it's been the critiquer's favorite, I haven't been able to get it off the ground yet. I need a little more medieval history first.

Have a great week everyone. I have some FantasyCon guest posts coming up, and my response to this week's blog prompt.