Goodreads asked Patrick McCusker:

How do you get inspired to write?

Patrick McCusker This is a question often asked. Writing can be most odd. You are having a cup of coffee or half asleep in a chair and an idea just floats into your head. Three years later you have a finished novel of 300-400 pages. Where such ideas come from is a mystery. Mystery or not grab at such ideas with both hands.

I have mention this somewhere else but it is worth a mention here in this context. On a winter's night I was driving a long distance when both the heater and the radio mysteriously stopped working. I was left to my imagination with the rain hitting the window.

Then a fragment of a thought - What if the true Crown-of-Thorns was discovered? And what if a tiny piece of mummified skin was found on one of the thorns? Through that journey little more came to me but I had the unsettling sensation that that thought had been implanted in my imagination. On the basis of that, several years later, the religious thriller -The Extraordinary Temptation - came into existence.

So I would say to new writers worried about what they might write about to stay relaxed and let an idea rise up and slap you in the face. When it does, grab at it and write down the fragment that has come to you before it falls away again. Now you have something to work with. A bit more on this in a youtube interview I did might help some. At least I hope it will.

Best regards

Patrick McCusker.

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