Goodreads asked Ella James:

How do you get inspired to write?

Ella James I don't really know. I just get an idea I can't get out of my head, and become obsessed with it, and it grows into a story sort of like a white lie grows into a larger one.

For my young adult novel, Here, I had this image of a girl finding a lost guy in the fields around her house, near sunset. And there were mountains in the background. The guy didn't know who he was. So a whole book was built around that small snippet.

For another book, Murder, I had an idea of this thing happening between two people, and then sought to tell the story of what happened in a way that would make the reader think something else had actually happened. And I built the characters after I had the basis of the plot.

And then for yet another book, Sloth, I had the idea of two college drug dealers having kind of some competition, and then hooking up. And then I had a totally different idea about two people writing each other anonymous letters. And I layered the two ideas on top of each other and it all became one book.

:)

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