How Do I Get Ideas For Novels?
Continuing my posts about writing.
I get my ideas, largely, by looking for items of historical interest: facts, objects, people, events, that intrigue me, but that most people have forgotten.
In Prussian Blue https://amzn.eu/d/4Mivqfj it was an odd coincidence of symptoms between the second wave variant of Spanish Flu and Phosgene gas.
In The November Criminals https://amzn.eu/d/5GbK0xA it was the disappearance in 1918 of Le Beau Sancy (the diamond on the cover) and its reappearance in a crypt in 1945.
In Red Berlin https://amzn.eu/d/crkjRo7 it was the fact that there were three communist leaders arrested and taken to the Eden Hotel in January 1919, two were brutally murdered, one escape unharmed. Why? How?
These stories fire my imagination, and they make me think, someone else should know about this. This is cool!
With this in mind, my next book Paris in Springtime, appeared from the fact that in spring of 1919, not only were the leaders of the French, British and US governments in Paris to discuss the terms of the peace (and the Germans weren't invited!), but representatives of every country, or would be country, looking to grasp Woodrow Wilson's promise of national self-determination. Bringing all those people together seemed like a fun environment for a little mayhem and chaos, and perhaps a little murder.
Book five, Golden Eagles, takes the idea of forgotten history and runs with it - Giant aeroplanes larger than B.17 or Lancaster bombers, flying cash and gold on secret missions across Europe to a nation most people don't even know existed. A freedom fighter turned national leader trying to build an Empire to span eastern Europe. All too cool to be forgotten... they deserved a story too.
That's my method. Find a fantastic fact, a kernel from which a story can grow, and see where it goes.
If you're an author, what's your method?
If you're a reader, do you enjoy this approach?
I get my ideas, largely, by looking for items of historical interest: facts, objects, people, events, that intrigue me, but that most people have forgotten.
In Prussian Blue https://amzn.eu/d/4Mivqfj it was an odd coincidence of symptoms between the second wave variant of Spanish Flu and Phosgene gas.
In The November Criminals https://amzn.eu/d/5GbK0xA it was the disappearance in 1918 of Le Beau Sancy (the diamond on the cover) and its reappearance in a crypt in 1945.
In Red Berlin https://amzn.eu/d/crkjRo7 it was the fact that there were three communist leaders arrested and taken to the Eden Hotel in January 1919, two were brutally murdered, one escape unharmed. Why? How?
These stories fire my imagination, and they make me think, someone else should know about this. This is cool!
With this in mind, my next book Paris in Springtime, appeared from the fact that in spring of 1919, not only were the leaders of the French, British and US governments in Paris to discuss the terms of the peace (and the Germans weren't invited!), but representatives of every country, or would be country, looking to grasp Woodrow Wilson's promise of national self-determination. Bringing all those people together seemed like a fun environment for a little mayhem and chaos, and perhaps a little murder.
Book five, Golden Eagles, takes the idea of forgotten history and runs with it - Giant aeroplanes larger than B.17 or Lancaster bombers, flying cash and gold on secret missions across Europe to a nation most people don't even know existed. A freedom fighter turned national leader trying to build an Empire to span eastern Europe. All too cool to be forgotten... they deserved a story too.
That's my method. Find a fantastic fact, a kernel from which a story can grow, and see where it goes.
If you're an author, what's your method?
If you're a reader, do you enjoy this approach?
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