I've been asked through other forums where i get my ideas for my novels. The answer: everywhere! I think I spent my life from childhood on, thinking "What if...?" I even have a coffee mug that sits in front of me as I work on my writing that says "What if?" So, what if i tried to wake up my blog here while I let my latest novel "rest" before I begin the "final" edit?


• The Glass (2011) I started by thinking I’d like to write about my childhood, but while visiting my father-in-law in a dementia ward, I realized that most of the people there were living in the past and confusing their visitors (usually family) with people they used to know. What if I created a character's biography of sorts that we later find out may not be totally accurate?
• Not Your Average Joe (2012) I’ve had several autistic students over the years, many of whom have had “special” talents of one kind or another. I have an autistic neighbor who lives on his own (with help of an aide who visits and helps with things a couple times a week). What if I wrote about an autistic kid growing up to be what appears to be fairly well adjusted, but who actually functions well because of a misguided belief in how the world works.
• The Leap (2013) I wanted to try my hand at a murder mystery, but I was also getting all this stuff about a college class reunion. What if a murder somehow reconnected some former college friends and revived old flames? What if one of these friends was connected to the murder? What if one murder leads to the possibility of more?
• The Accidental Bully Series
o The Accidental Bully (2014) I wanted to try a novel for school age kids, and our school district was really pushing an anti-bullying theme. I wanted to show that some kids are bullies because they have been bullied and that even adults can be bullies, often without even realizing that they are. What if a badly treated kid becomes a bit of a bully because of that? What if an even bigger bully takes him on. What if he finds a couple of friends who show him a better way? What if even a couple of adults appear to bully kids and call it “discipline”?
o Who’s Sorry Now, Chicken Dork? (2015) I had a really good reception with the first book, but was bothered by some of the teacher’s reactions. They seemed to be more concerned that the principal and the school counselor weren’t on the same page with their response to bullying, yet didn’t seem at all bothered with the fact that kids were being bullied for being perceived as “gay”. I’d seen many kids (in elementary school) actually being bullied by being called gay. What if one of the characters in the story came out as actually being gay? What if it didn’t bother his parents or his best friends?
o Just Friends (2015) What if I took the main characters through a little more growing up? I wrote this at the same time I wrote the previous book, wanting to show the struggles of middle school kids. I wasn’t surprised that the teachers who “loved” the first book stopped using it in their classrooms when the last two volumes came out. Even there was no inappropriate behavior, just the idea of having a kid declaring to be gay and another struggling to discover who he was (and his parents’ reactions) was deemed “not appropriate” for their age.
• Slow Dance (2018) Watching and reading the news I began to wonder what would make a seemingly good man mess up his life so bad that he would destroy everything he had? I’d also been new science discoveries dealing with dementia. What if there was a man whose wife had dementia and he was willing to try anything to get her back? What if he found the an old classmate had a possible solution? What if things don’t go exactly as he had planned? What if, given the right (wrong?) circumstances, even a “good” man could be changed?
• The Web (2012, 2018) I began this novel thinking about how (back then) all I heard from friends was how an Apple can’t be hacked and you can’t get a virus. What if I wrote a novel based on this (now more widely known) fallacy? What if some unknowing computer user gets hacked and framed for something he never did? What if it was to cover up other crimes? What if as the crimes unravel, previously unknown connections to others in the story are revealed. What if the web just keeps growing until it seems that everyone is trapped ? This novel contains some subject matter that made my early readers/editors uncomfortable, though it wasn’t explicit. Life events in 2012 prevented my publishing it, but with some revisions I finished it six years later.
• In Dreams, You See (2019) Walking along the lake one morning, I was trying to come up with an idea for NaNoWriMo which would begin in just a couple of weeks, but was drawing a blank. Somewhere along the path I realized that the two young women kept glancing back at me as I neared them. They eventually left the pathway and walked across the grass to the road and headed back towards the parking lot as they kept glancing over at the old man (me) walking along with his headphones on. What did they think? I was a stalker? A murderer? What if I was? What if I added some a little supernatural help for the one being stalked? What if her stalker had murdered someone who was trying to communicate warnings through her dreams. What if nobody believed her?
• Dream Lovers (2020) An article in Discover magazine about multiverses and “bubbleverses” and branes got me to researching thoughts about the universe. Could there actually be other universes where we all exist? Could our actions in one create alternate realities in another? Would they still be connected somehow? Or would our lives just be a little different somehow? I was tempted to try to write this novel like one of those old “WhichWay” or “Choose a Path” books, but as I outlined it, it was clear that my “What Ifs” would make it a never ending story! What if I wrote several versions of the main characters’ lives? What if the were clear similarities to the stories, yet totally different lives?
• The Last Popsicle Stick (2020) What if that kid who always scared the other kids grew up to be really scary? What if he was actually crazy enough to not even recognize reality? What if his perceived goal in life was to be good enough so that he could avoid the ultimate punishment? What if he couldn’t succeed?
• Sing Me a Song (2021) (Not yet published) I always have a song stuck in my head. What if I wrote about a character who couldn’t help but act out whatever song he was thinking about? Or what if whatever he was doing made him think of a song? Or what if whatever he was doing made him think of a new song? What if he became a famous songwriter? What if he struggled to become a success and it affected his relationships with his friends? What if I finally brought back the characters from the Accidental Bully series (as some have requested) as adults? What if I had Jay write lyrics as part of the storyline?