Where Do I Get My Story Ideas?

I like to answer questions about my writing. I much prefer that to the actual readings. I just realized that as I typed it, but it's true. I don't know if it's the interactivity of it or that I'm not confident that I do a good job of reading, but I do know that I like to talk about the process I go through in my writing. And that's true despite the fact that, no matter how many times I do events, I get the same few questions every time. Once in awhile, someone will surprise me, but mostly it's some combination of the same three or four questions. So I thought I would do a short series of posts in which I answer those queries. 

One thing that is almost always asked, especially at events that aren't with other authors, is where I get my story ideas. The first time I was asked that, I have to admit that I was taken aback to realize I didn't have any idea. And the reason for that is that when I first started writing Harsh Prey, my first book, it was more about the characters than the story itself. I had two people who loved each other deeply, but one of them wasn't sure if she could deal with the violent job of the other. It was almost like I had a snapshot and I built the whole story out from that still frame. It's not almost like that, actually. It's exactly like that. I had no idea where the story was going. At the beginning, I asked myself, what if she's been gone to decide if she can deal with his being a detective and she calls, only to have the violence of his job intervene? And that seemed to work, so I had to ask why the violence happened. The answer was what propelled the story. But regardless of what happened in the detective half of the books, they were, and always will be, more than half about that relationship between Harry and Dee, and now Jenn and Emma Grace too. The Shalan Adventures are, for good or bad, stories about a loving family and the things they go through together. It's almost incidental that he's a gumshoe. 

The second Shalan story, Kisses and Lies, was loosely inspired by an event in the life of the young lady upon whom I based the leggy blonde at the beginning of the book. She had gotten married--in fact, I had performed the wedding--and found that her new husband changed immediately afterward. It was nowhere near as violent as it was in my fictionalized version, but it was, as usual, this series of what-ifs. What if he had been hiding something darker? What if it got violent? What if there were a family dynamic that added a level of depth? And the story grew from there.

The next two, In the Shadow and Dawn of Grace, are really one giant story arc broken into two books. The arc actually begins at the end of Kisse and Lies when Harry finds out that Dee is pregnant. That story was always going to be primarily about them losing that baby and then getting it back. I made the story of Jenn to parallel that. The Jenn part was again inspired loosely by real life events, though no one incident in particular. I'm just exposed to and touched by stories of abuse against young people because of my job as a high school teacher. And when I started writing In the Shadow, I just chose a young lady who was my student and made her the face I saw when I imagined the story in my mind. This young lady wasn't just my student. She was one of my adopted kids, the gang who eat lunch in my room and stay after school to watch movies while I make pancakes and come see me after they graduate when they come home from college. So when I pictured someone doing terrible things to her, it helped me tap into the rage that drove Harry to do what he did at the end of the book. 

As for my current work in progress, it grew out of a scene from a classic book. I read it as part of the AP reading last summer. It was about a young lady taken in by someone purporting to be her father, but he turns out to be a very bad man. Over the course of the week of the reading, I started building a story on that concept that had nothing to do with the original book at all, but that evolved from that situation. What if a teenager had no family and suddenly someone came along saying he was her long-lost father and he wanted to take her in? So that made me ask the next question, which was how did she come to have no one? Was she always an orphan or did she have a family that she lost somehow? And what if, like in the original book, he wasn't really her father? Why would he be interested in taking her in? I knew he had to have some ulterior motive, but I really didn't want it to be anything sexual. I'd had enough of that dark realm and wanted his motivations to be evil in a completely different way. So the story built from there. 

So I guess the answer to the question of where I get my story ideas is that I start with a character or a group of characters and a beginning point--a snapshot in time--and I start asking what if. What if this happened? What if he or she reacted in that way? And once I've asked and answered enough of those what-ifs, I have a book. Piece of cake. Mmm, cake. I better wrap this up and have some breakfast. 

Next week: Where Do My Characters Come From?

30 Day Blog Challenge Day 30: A Weird Quirk Of Mine

We made it! Day 30 of 30 has arrived. Hard to believe how quickly it went. I've had a blast and I hope you've enjoyed it too. I hope you've gotten to know me a little better. Some of you may feel like you know me a lot better than you wanted to. At any rate, my last assignment is to write about a weird quirk of mine. I'm not sure I'm that quirky a guy. I mean I don't refuse to step on cracks or count my steps when I walk or do any of those things. But I guess there is one thing I do that's kind of quirky.

I make noises. I don't mean I make rude noises after eating too much fiber. Everybody does that, right? No, I mean I do sound effects. And the weird and quirky part is that I don't even realize I'm doing them half the time until someone gives me an odd look. Another odd thing about them is that I never learned to do them. I just realized one day my mouth made these noises. I can whistle like a bird and do other whistling sounds. I've actually fooled people into thinking there was a bird in the room. I can also roll my tongue and make an odd sound that I can only describe as being similar to a train whistle. Finally, I can make a noise that I call the 50-pound bumble bee. It involves sucking in air and I just can't even explain how it works.

Another quirky thing I do is write books. It must be somewhat quirky to do that, right? I mean, not everybody does that, so it's kind of sort of quirky. If you enjoy reading my blogs and haven't tried any of my books yet, I hope you will. If you aren't already a member of my mailing list, you can get a free download of my first book, Harsh Prey, by joining. The form is just over there to the right. All you need to do is put your email in and then you'll receive a confirmation email (if you don't get it, check your spam) that you'll need to answer. That's so no one can just put in a random email address as a joke. Plus, if you sign up by May 7, you'll be in the running for one of two signed copies of my third book, In The Shadow. And you'll hear about publication dates first, as well as receive occasional gifts and discounts. I hope you'll consider it.

Sorry for the crass commercialism there at the end. It was, admittedly, kind of a "Be sure to drink your Ovaltine." kind of moment. But hey, I'm an author. Trying to get you to buy our books is part of our quirky charm.

WV Book Festival

My booth on the first day

For those who are regular followers of my blog, you know this entry is a day later than usual. That's because I was at the WV Book festival this weekend and wanted to wait until it was over to write about it. Well, that and I was really busy, but mainly the first thing. I could summarize the whole event by saying that I definitely plan to go again next year.

I went in, to be honest, with extremely low expectations. The last two events I attended where there were many authors there, I sold next to no books. In point of fact, I sold exactly one at each--and one was basically an exchange with the writer at the next table. So I figured this would be a similar experience, but I wanted to go anyway in the hopes that I would add some names to my mailing list and get my face and name known a little around the state.

The amazing sign that Charlie Gesell made for me. I got
several positive comments about it.

Well, I got that and more. I actually sold several books--at least compared to the other events. I added sixteen names to my mailing list and I met some amazingly nice people. The folks in the next booth, Devin and Sue Thompson (Sue writes historical romance and Devin provides, in his words "logistical assistance"), were helpful and generous and just plain nice. They were my first sale! Additionally, I shared my booth for part of the day on Saturday with a man named Mark DeBryan, who (beyond the fact that he forced me to take money for sharing my booth) gave me some amazing pointers and ideas for increasing my sales. And he was a nice guy to boot.

As an added bonus, I got to see some old friends. I ran into some treasured former students and even some current ones. I also said hello to some authors and writing business folks I've gotten to know over the last several months since I started travelling with my books.

There were tons of activities going on beyond just the booths.
There were several big-name authors giving talks, workshops,
and even a children's area. This is the fairy tale parade. They
were moving pretty fast, so this is the best picture I got.

It was quite a positive, productive weekend. I got ideas for improving several aspects of my business and I spent time with nice folks. I'd like to thank the Kanawha County Public Library and all the people who took countless hours putting this event together. I can't think of a single thing I would change, except maybe letting the authors park for free, but that was a Civic Center thing, so it doesn't even count.

So, next year, when this comes around again, you can be sure you'll see me there--hopefully with another book or two for sale.

Goodreads Giveaway for HARSH PREY!

I'm running a new giveaway on Goodreads, but this time it's for my debut novel, Harsh Prey. I hope by getting the first book in the series into people's hands, I'll get them hooked on the whole series. If you bought this book already, it's okay because this is a new updated version with new cover and a few neat new features.

So click the entry form below or to the right by August 10 and you'll may be a winner!

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Harsh Prey

by Joe Stephens

Giveaway ends August 10, 2015.
See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

Enter Giveaway

Post on Writing Wranglers and Warriors

Here's a link to my blog post for Sunday, July 12 for the blog group of which I am a member, Writing Wranglers and Warriors: 

As a reader and writer of detective fiction, one of the things I pay attention to and struggle with is the creation of a believable villain. As a reader, some of the best villains I remember have been complete sociopaths, with no remorse whatever. The comic book equivalent would be the Joker. Those can be entertaining, especially when they lose. An example from literature I’ve read recently was from James Lee Burke’s Light of the World. The killer was, based on some veiled backstory, messed up as a child. But, regardless of how he got there, Asa Surrette was a demon who gained joy from inflicting pain on others and had no mixed feelings about it. I did enjoy seeing him go down at the end of the book. And I was glad it was a painful death.

Read the rest here. 

Stuff I Learned While Editing My Third Book

I'm getting set to head to Tamarack in the morning, so, though you can't tell it, I'm writing this on Friday. One of the joys of summer is time to get writing work done. This week, I've made some changes to both Harsh Prey and Kisses and Lies. No changes to the storylines or anything. For Harsh Prey, I updated the cover and back cover as well as fixing an alarming number of errors, proofreading and otherwise. It now has crazy stuff, like headers and page numbers and all the words are (I hope) spelled correctly. Kisses and Lies had but one typo that I could find and the cover was already amazing, so that didn't change, though I did change the back cover to include the blurb and a short bio. Both books now take up a lot less room, too. I changed both to single spaced, which did a couple things. First, it made the footprint of each book a lot smaller, which is pretty environmentally friendly. Second, it saved pretty heavily on print costs and I'll be able to pass the savings along to buyers.

But while I wasn't working on that stuff, I finally started this week with editing and revising Shalan #3, In the Shadow (Available around beginning of October). This process has taught me a few things. Here they are, in no particular order:

I like editing on paper instead of the computer. I've never done that since the olden days when I had no choice but to write and edit on paper. Since I got a word processor program for my sexy new Commodore 64, which came complete with a dot matrix printer and no hard drive, I've done all my editing right on the computer screen. This time, however, I accidentally started doing it on paper. I say accidentally because I never would have done it if I hadn't printed out a copy so my medical consultant, the real Dr. Mathur (that will make sense when you read the book) could make corrections when I butchered the medical scenes. I went through her comments and made corrections and then, before I knew it, I was editing the whole thing on paper. I found myself moving around in the text checking continuity and tweaking the storyline in ways that would be downright difficult to do on the computer. So I think it's paper editing for me from now on.

I've come a long way as a writer. Since I did an edit of HP immediately before ITS, I realize that, while I think the first book was good, I feel like the newest book is exponentially more engaging. Part of that is because I've had three books now to flesh out Harry, Dee, and Otis, making them more three-dimensional as time has gone by, but I think it's also about just honing my voice as a writer. I hope you'll agree.

I tend to be my worst critic. That's not really news, especially to my Pepper Potts, aka Maria Delgado. She and I were texting about the new book and I said something positive about it and, even through text, I could tell she was pleasantly shocked that it wasn't another critical statement about myself.

Speaking of Pepper and Dr. Mathur, this book, more than any other, reminds me that I can't do this alone. Poonam came all the way from Hershey, Pennsylvania to work with me on the medical scenes in this story. Without her, those scenes simply wouldn't have rung true. Maria reads every version of every book and, though she doesn't do a lot of editorial work, she is my own personal cheerleader. Her support is unwavering and it means the world to me.

I can make myself cry. When I wrote the first draft of this book, it was a dark time for me. The story goes into some really tragic and scary places within human nature, But I never cried. This time, though, as I reread after having put the story away for a couple months, one scene in particular brought a tear to my eye. Harry and Dee are just as real to me as if they were flesh and bone real and when a heartbreaking thing happens to them, it breaks my heart too. Yes, I made them up and I could have written them any way I wanted. But most writers will tell you that, no, I really couldn't have. It really doesn't work that way.

And finally, I discovered--okay, I really just confirmed something I already suspected--that I would love to do this stuff full time. It's summer. I could be outside. I could be traveling. I could be making money teaching summer school. What am I doing? I'm going to bed early and getting up every day and either writing, editing, or marketing. And I'm happy as a clam. I really, really hope I don't have to wait another 8 or 9 years to get to do this all the time. But I guess that's up to the book buying public.

So there they are. Six things I learned this week. That's a lot of stuff considering I only started Monday. So what did you learn this week?