Hello everyone! It’s time to reveal the answers for 7 questions we have asked to all 13 author participants of the May Group Author Interview! The support from Young Adult authors was amazing as we have thirteen authors participating in this group author interview. Just in case if you are wondering who we are interviewing this month, you can check out
this link and get all your Crime Fiction/Horror/Mystery writers to participate in the next group interview.
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The very first question we asked to all 13 authors is “what was your inspiration to write a book?” and let’s see what inspired all of them to write.
I get inspiration for my books from all kinds of strange places. Sometimes it’s something crazy one of my kids says, or it might be song lyrics, a book, a movie I watched that I thought should have gone a different direction, a painting, a random news headline. Really, anything that makes me stop and think, “I wonder what would happen if …” One of my newest books, Wicked Hunger, was inspired by two words from a Jim Butcher novel. The two words were, “Godling Hunger”
The Last Orphans has been brewing in my mind for years. I grew up in the South and wanted to write a story set there, but didn’t want to do it too early in my writing career. I wanted to work on my craft, writing stories that forced me to focus on character, integrating setting into the story in a meaningful way, and story in general. A little over a year ago, I outlined The Last Orphans, feeling like I was ready to tackle my book set in the South. Growing up in the Bible Belt, the apocalypse was something that was brought up frequently in church, so naturally, it is an element in the book. I also have an extensive background in anthropology and the sciences, so I like to tie that in to my religious upbringing. But more importantly, the Southern setting, the way the characters interact and behave, their hopes, dreams and insecurities, my inspiration for those things and even the fictional city of Leeville comes directly from my childhood.
I write a lot in general because I get ideas and I love words, so I have had thousands of words lying around for the last ten years without ever consciously deciding to write an actual book. Right at the end of 2012, I started a particular story which later became The Atomic Circus, my first proper book. It was the first story that I made a real commitment to completing and once I’d finished it I had a huge sense of personal accomplishment. I guess you could say I’m a bit addicted to that feeling now!
I just wanted to try it out. I had a couple of friends who had done it, and I figured, how hard could it be? LOL
I have been a writer since I was very young. Dead in the Water was inspired by my students (I work in a high school).
I really have a strong connection to my family and their stories of surviving and growing up stuck with me. I wanted to pay tribute to my Dad’s honest way of growing up and the real hardships people faced then.
Honestly, it all began with a dream as cliché as that sounds! I saw my two main characters holding hands while a spiritual being breaks through to this side. I wanted my ‘angel-themed’ book to be unique, maybe offer a different side to the popular fallen angel market. I dove head first into research, and having always been fascinated by the City of Enoch, I read from the Book of Enoch itself. (Not exactly light reading.) From there and several other accounts, I pieced together the story of the fallen angels known as The Watchers. (Crazy watching the movie Noah and being like wait a minute…that’s not what The Watchers are! Sigh…guess all of us consider ourselves experts of our own stories.) I am captivated by The Watchers, and weave their story into this modern day series. Throwing my characters into an ancient war that began long ago between angels, demons, and the fallen ones.
The first scene came to mind years ago when I was in college. It was a crisp, fall day and as I walked to class, the wind and swirling leaves at my feet created a scenario in my head. When I became bored during my humanities class, instead of taking notes, I started writing a descriptive scene that was intended to simply end as a piece of poetry. Instead, I couldn’t stop thinking about this girl who I envisioned in my head, grieving beside a river on a cloudy, cold day. (I even kept thinking about it while on a rugby road trip, of all things!) I didn’t know until a couple years later when I picked up that piece of writing again that this poetic scene would transform into chapter two of Lingering Echoes.
I always wanted to write a book. From a young age, I wrote greeting cards, magazines, short stories and poetry that I shared with friends and family. I continued that creative writing in high school with stories published in the local paper. One day, my best friend’s mom told me that I would write romance novels, and she planned to read every one. Through the years, as my life and career took my away from creative writing and into the less-creative, but sometimes more lucrative business writing, she was one of the ones who always encouraged me to get back to my dream and write that book.
The Woodlands was born from a lack of any other creative outlet. I had always thrown myself into designing and renovating our home. Suddenly we found ourselves homeless due to unfortunate circumstances and had to move in with my parents for six months. Unable to do anything else I decided to sit down and start writing. It came so effortlessly that I just kept going, never intending to write a book until that’s what I had!
It’s different for each project, but it always starts with a spark. The spark can come from anywhere, a song, a documentary, even something as simple as a dress in a store window.
I was inspired to start writing my series from this 3 night long continuous dream I had when I was in high school. The entire dream sequence covers about the first two to three chapters of THE CHOSEN. The more I thought about it, the more intrigued I became with it. So after the third night of this happening, instead of taking social studies notes, I started writing it down. Apparently writing down your dreams ruins the chain of continuous dream sequencing because that night was dreamless. I was then stuck wondering what was going to happen to these characters? I had to know if the main girl, Kaia, was going to do this quest or not, so I began writing down her story.
13) Author #13: Michael Thal
The inspiration to writing The Abduction of Joshua Bloom, was a dream. I woke up in the middle of the night and jotted notes about being abducted by a starship filled with alien women.
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