IWSG June 2026

Good lord. We’re already halfway through the year.

June 3 question – Do most of your story ideas come from one place (the news, dreams, etc.) or do they hit from all over the place?

Some of my ideas start in dreams, like The Heritage Blood Saga (out in print and digital! Everywhere fine books are sold! Buy it today!). It took a few years to shape up into something coherent, though.

Some start from objects. The kids insisted I buy a particular witch hat for myself when they were in elementary school. The problem came from the hat being too small to fit on my head, necessitating the use of long hat pins, which I did not have. Which turned into a quest to find said hatpins.  Which then turned into research about hatpins. Which then turned into uncovering crimes involving hatpins as weapons.  Which turned into a steampunk concept. Which I am still working on.

The romance novels, A Mundae Affair of the Heart series, started out in a bizarre fashion (A Special Blend of Crazy is also out in digital and print! Buy it today!). Kinda talking to myself, kinda trying to keep us from dying because I was driving while trying to hold a conversation. Kinda remembering some glorious phrases I heard used on that camping weekend that absolutely had to be immortalized in some fashion. Then, it just kinda moves into different storlines from there. Kinda like Physarum polycephalum, which is a slime mold without a brain, but can solve mazes and such.

It probably doesn’t bode well that I frequently compare some of my writing to the slime mold Physarum polycephalum.