My inspiration seems to come from anywhere and everywhere, but until this week I never really stopped to consider where some of the smaller details of a story evolve from.
Say, for instance, the grotto-like bathrooms in my Sarazen books. Well, it came to me today as I was working hard on finishing up Sarazen's Hunt.

First of all, there is now no way anyone can convince me Facebook isn't involved in monitoring and analyzing every detail of our lives.
My author page is VERY different from my personal page. There aren't details of my life on the Author page that should have connected me to anyone other than readers. Friends I invited to like my page had nothing to do with what occurred, as they are recent friends and we have no friends in common from my childhood.

But Tuesday, out of the blue, a man I knew from my life in California, popped up as one of those friends FB suggests you know. No friends in common, no contact with him for more than a decade, I don't have his number in my phone contacts for it to have tagged him, no reason for FB to pop this guy up on my feed, and yet there he is all the same.

I was delighted, creeped out by Facebook, but delighted because I have nothing but kind and grateful memories of this person. Is this how they suck you in? I think so, lol.

Rewind to nearly 18 years ago. I was involved with the local Shakespeare troupe during a very emotionally tumultuous time in my life. I won't lie, things in my personal life were bad, and this man, not knowing the true depth of my issues, asked if I would housesit for him while he was gone at Burning Man to take care of his plants and animals and such.

It meant I got to get away from those problems of mine and rest for a while, in his eclectic little house that was literally over the hill, through the woods, and nestled within the crevasse of a deep canyon.
It seemed like paradise to me at the time, but the coolest part of the entire home was the bathroom.

Handy and crafty as he was, his bathtub appeared to be sunken into an enormous boulder. There were niches made for candles that looked totally natural, but from floor to ceiling along the one wall, you were looking at a cave. The whole bathroom seemed to be half cave half home, and I recall soaking up to my chin in bubbles with Lorenna McKennit singing her mysterious songs in this grotto, so relaxed and at peace, I didn't want to leave that tub. I've soaked in many a tub over the years, but that one was special because it was so damn cool!

So as I re-read through some of my work, it came to me how a memory, an encounter with someone who was so kind to me as a kid, still influences my work today. How my subconscious thoughts come out as woeful landscapes or sanctuary like bathrooms located on alien planets.

Also, perhaps this is where my love of soaking tubs has come from.