Sometimes people ask me where my ideas come from, and to be honest, I have a really hard time remembering. By the time I'm writing, the story has percolated and morphed so much that I can't remember the origin.
I can say that when I started Deadly Valentine (free), Jack and Tess were already married, her name was Kate and his last name was Fortune. My goal was to write a sexy mystery series ala Hart to Hart.
I can't remember how Drawn to Her came to be. I started it a zillion years ago before there was wireless internet (Drake sets up dial-up Internet access in the first draft). Meant to Be became my homage to Persuasion by Jane Austen, but it didn't start out as that. When I started Wed to Her, I remember thinking how funny it would be to have a man raising his uncle. When my kids were little, we used to listen to a kids
tape that had a song on it called, "I'm My Own Grandpa" where, in a convoluted set of circumstances, a man ends up being his own grandfather.
Many ideas I get aren't for stories necessarily. A binge watch of Airplane Repo led to creating the character of AJ in Death of a Debtor. I have to poison someone in Death of a Miser (book 3) and while I think I've figured out which poison I'll use, watching a YouTube video about a restaurant that accidentally used grill cleaner as vinegar made me wonder if I
should use that idea.
However, my friends and family have learned to be careful what they say around me as many things end up in books. My stepdad's stories about Junior Junior from his home town led me to use that name in Death of a Coupon Queen (book two in the Sophie Parker Mysteries). In Death of a Debtor, there's mention of Sophie getting her finger stuck under Aunt Rose's kitchen table, which really happened to my sister in my great-grandmother's
table.
I guess the answer is; ideas come from anywhere and everywhere.
