Katherine asked Mason Thomas:

Where do you get your ideas from?

Mason Thomas Tricking questions to answer--it's different for each book. But it always starts with this small spark, a tiny little "huh" moment that gets me thinking, and it'll keep poking at me until I start to do something with it. Sometimes, it's a concept, like a unique feature in the world--the magic system for example. Other times it's a character idea. In my latest, I wondered what it would be like for gay rugby player to enter a fantasy world. I was curious how the ruggedness of rugby would translate into a hard and violent medieval world. Once I have a general direction I want to go, other fragments of ideas tend to coalesce around that core idea. There's this cascading effect then, as ideas build on ideas. And before I know it, a story arc forms in my head.

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