Getting Ideas for Novels

I've already posted about how I got my idea for my zombie book, but I realized I didn't officially tell you how Ivy came to be, or how she evolved into a book.

I have to give credit to my writer friend Ryan Rhoads. He was instrumental to her creation. He started posting short fiction on his blog and encouraged me to do the same.(I was very pregnant at the time and had slowed WAY down on my novel.) I've never been really great at short stories, but maybe I could do something else...

I'd also recently received a comment from a reader on this blog.

Emily, First off, let me offer my appreciation for your blog as one that- though I do follow a fair few- your's is one that I'm always in the mood to read; partly because I like your writing style and partly because what you say interests me to the point of distraction. [...]

Alex.

This comment was just what I needed. Alex, if you're reading this now (a year later), thank you!

I realized at that point that my blog voice was better than my character's voice in my then WIP. So, I thought to myself: What if I wrote a book like I wrote my blog. It could be one long blog post, written by a character who has a life more interesting then mine.

That idea collided with the short fiction idea. I could experiment with the blog-post-novel idea and first person present (which I'd never used before). But what to write about?

I love fairy tales. They appear on my Sweet Spot Map all the time. And they're short enough for blogging.

That's when I met Ivy Thorn.