Goodreads asked Nancy Gray:

Where did you get the idea for your most recent book?

Nancy Gray The first idea for this book series came from a dream I had of a blood-splattered lighthouse. I don't remember many details of the dream, but that image stuck with me.

During this time, I was also reading a book called "Weird Carolinas" and it told a story about blood actually raining down over a small section of North Carolina. I was intrigued by the horror of this real life event and got the idea for the "Blood Rain" in my story. (I highly recommend this book series for anyone who wants to learn interesting details about their state. It was intriguing and their is a different "Weird" book for each state.)

I got my inspiration for the world of "Lacern" from many different places. I was watching the "Avatar the Last Airbender" series on TV (NOT the movie) and thought that the different regions with different types of magic was a fun concept.

I was also playing Morrowind during this time and had the thought that it would be interesting to be able to get on top of one of the giant mushrooms. I started imagining rope bridges connecting them and came up with the idea of Mercy's treetop village.

The novels I read at the time were also a big inspiration. I was reading Jim Butcher's "Codex Alera" series and the Canim in the stories gave me inspiration for the beast races in mine. There are many differences between my story and his, however, in that there are many different types of beast races in my story and the origin of the beast people is very different. (I'm trying to avoid spoilers...)

I started writing all of these ideas down in a sort of hodge-podge fashion and ended up filling up an entire notebook of notes about the setting, the characters and their backgrounds, plot ideas I found interesting, arguments the characters might have, motivations, etc. In the end, I took these ideas and made a rough outline. I followed the outline some of the time and free wrote if my characters didn't cooperate. (Anyone who has ever written extensively has probably had this problem or will have this problem in the future--your characters don't always do what you want them to do in the end.)

Anyway, I hope you enjoy the story. I'm hoping to have the second of the series "Blood Moon" published soon.

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