A lot of times people ask writers: ‘Where do your ideas come from?’ to which the usual reply is, ‘Everywhere.’ While this is basically true. While it seems like an idea pops out fully formed, it is likely that you’re only hearing about it once a lot of ideas from all over the place will finally come together in that one lightning bolt moment.
I can get little ideas from tv shows or movies I watch, other books I read, from music I listen to, or even just things I see or hear during the course of my day. It’s taking all those little sparks and organizing them until you hit that one piece that brings it all together …sort of like the straw that broke the camel’s back, only it’s a good thing.
For the Storyteller, that moment was while I was reading through lesser known fairy tales on the Internet and I read one called The Little Wildrose. When I read that the main character was carried off and then raised by eagles, that’s when the lightning struck my brain. I had wanted to write a story with fairy tales where the characters are aware that the fairy tales are a thing every since I read Mercedes Lacky’s The Fairy Godmother. It wasn’t until this point that I finally had the idea of where to start.
And even with that idea, I had a false start where Wildrose was the main character and was going into the tales alone. This is where I got the idea for playing with genders though, as I made Wildrose male and had him interacting with a female Bluebeard. A few months later I wrote 90k words in October and November with Tabitha as the main character and the rest is now history.
