A common question for authors is, “Where do you get your story ideas/inspiration from?” For me, the easiest answer to that is: from everywhere and everything. 

Inspiration

I was one of those kids who half-lived inside their own imagination, and stories are always on my mind. The slightest thing can happen and it has my mind spiraling into thoughts of, “Well how would things work out if this happened? Or what if this thing led to that thing?”

I very clearly remember my junior high English teacher making some offhand comment along the lines of what if a castle housed a school, and my mind immediately conjured up a cast of junior high students who went to that school and ended up in situations where they had to solve odd mysteries involving the castle. I went home that day and started writing it. Small things like that have always inspired story ideas for me. 

I’ve mentioned in a previous post that my whole idea for The Genie Whisperer came from something as silly as me being enticed by a “genie” game that was essentially Bejeweled with genies in the background. I was so disappointed since the way the game was advertised made me think there was some type of storyline that I asked myself, “Okay, so what story with genies do you think would be interesting?” And then Ali, her seven genies, and the McMichael family were born. 

I’ll have more posts on specific things that I’ve gotten inspiration from, including how I come up with part of the story for The Three B’s of Genie Whispering, book six of The Genie Whisperer. But it has spoilers for the book, so I’ll have to wait a little on posting that!