Ask the Author: James R. Paddock
Answered Questions (2)
James R. Paddock
A writer is a person who stares at his computer monitor until his eyes bleed or his brain explodes into exciting, pulse pounding words. Okay, a little out there in description. Seriously, where does an author get his idea for any book? That's really the question.
My answer has two parts: From the people, the community, around me and I have no earthly idea. I look at my current WIP as well as the fifteen titles preceding it and can come up with only two that had a trigger for an idea. The trigger for 'Smilodon' and the resulting trilogy came from a television program I was watching about finding the remains of sabre-toothed cats. What if there was DNA from which to clone the long extinct animals? And so I began writing.
The idea for 'Driven by Death' came from a day on the golf course when a friend was hit in the head with a golf ball. I was standing there, watching my friend bleed, waiting on our local Emergency Squad, thinking . . . What if he died and it was murder? Oh, what goes through the head of a writer. By-the-way, he lived to tell the story, laughing with his good friend who hit the ball.
The story I'm working on currently opens in the Bob Marshal Wilderness in Montana. The main character comes awake on the forest floor to find a woman lying on top of him, blond hair in his face, filled with the stench of blood and smoke. The first question I ask with my fingers hovering over the keyboard is: Who is this woman? Where did she come from? Why blood and smoke? The main character realizes one thing right off, that is that his wife's hair is red, not blond.
From where did this opening come? I have no idea, but there it is, taking form before my bleeding eyes. I don't know if the resulting words are pulse pounding, but they're definitely exciting. The possibilities for plot direction are endless.
My answer has two parts: From the people, the community, around me and I have no earthly idea. I look at my current WIP as well as the fifteen titles preceding it and can come up with only two that had a trigger for an idea. The trigger for 'Smilodon' and the resulting trilogy came from a television program I was watching about finding the remains of sabre-toothed cats. What if there was DNA from which to clone the long extinct animals? And so I began writing.
The idea for 'Driven by Death' came from a day on the golf course when a friend was hit in the head with a golf ball. I was standing there, watching my friend bleed, waiting on our local Emergency Squad, thinking . . . What if he died and it was murder? Oh, what goes through the head of a writer. By-the-way, he lived to tell the story, laughing with his good friend who hit the ball.
The story I'm working on currently opens in the Bob Marshal Wilderness in Montana. The main character comes awake on the forest floor to find a woman lying on top of him, blond hair in his face, filled with the stench of blood and smoke. The first question I ask with my fingers hovering over the keyboard is: Who is this woman? Where did she come from? Why blood and smoke? The main character realizes one thing right off, that is that his wife's hair is red, not blond.
From where did this opening come? I have no idea, but there it is, taking form before my bleeding eyes. I don't know if the resulting words are pulse pounding, but they're definitely exciting. The possibilities for plot direction are endless.
James R. Paddock
I put my butt in the chair, open the computer and stare at it until my eyes bleed. When that doesn't work I go back a chapter or two, do sort of a gentle reboot. My current WIP stalled recently at 33,000 words. I went all the way back to the beginning and started editing. As per my routine, that'll happen three or four more times before the book is done. It's my way of staying engaged in the story.
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