Inspiration, aka, "So where do you get ideas for all those dirty stories?"

Hello all! We're Fae Sutherland and Marguerite Labbe, fellow EC authors with the Hussies and ever so glad to be here. Today we're gonna talk about inspiration. So, without further ado, take it, Margie!

Writers are asked this question all the time – where do you get your ideas? Which is kind of amusing and befuddling at once. What do you mean? There are ideas everywhere, surely you must be hit with them as often as we are, you can barely walk outside without tripping over one. I have a notecard box full of ideas that will never see the light of day because we have so many. My co-author Fae is known as the ‘idea queen.’ Her favorite starting line in a conversation is ‘so I’ve had this idea,’ and all I can do is grab a pen and paper and hope to get it all down before she finishes.

*Fae pokes her head in* I’m still waiting on my crown, by the way. I’m with Margie. How do you *not* get a bazillion ideas? They’re everywhere, from an abandoned cart full of groceries outside a store (twice in the last month, I’m beginning to ponder the existence of a grocery store kidnapper who snatches people before they can unload their carts) to a young man studying French on the Metro. Everyone and everything has a story. So we tell them.

We recently went on a day road trip and discussed this very question and pointed out all the various stories lurking along the way. There was a man sitting near the road on a little hill, far back enough that he wasn’t looking for a ride but still noticeable. We weren’t near a town at the time and there was no road construction nearby. So we started asking each other questions. What was he doing there? Was he on his way somewhere? Had his car broken down? What brought him to sit on that hill at that particular time?

*Fae peeks in again* Tell ‘em how we got so distracted brainstorming a book on the way back that we ended up in Pennsylvania instead of DC! Seriously folks, we went about 40 miles or so in the wrong direction, glanced up and went, “Oh, look at that. PA state line…wait, what?!” Oh, the perils of being a writer.

To my defense, since I was the one driving, we had just eaten at a restaurant that was my normal stopping off point whenever I go up to Pittsburgh. Of course I didn’t notice we were going in the wrong direction, besides hammering out a plot takes a lot of concentration. It’s not like we were lost. The whole 40 miles back we were shaking our heads and asking ourselves how we could not have noticed for so long, though.

*Fae rolls her eyes* Believe me, this is not the first, nor will it be the last, time we got so distracted by plotting or talking about characters/stories that we lost track of time/where we were. When inspiration hits, you grab it by both hands and don’t let go until you’ve milked it for all it’s worth. Ideas may be frequent in appearing, but they’re also quick about disappearing into the brain fog if they’re not jotted down immediately.

And to be honest not all ideas pan out into a story. Other ones start as stories but never get finished because they fizzle out, like Fae’s French guy on the Metro or our deserted island story. Others grab us and we run with it until we’re finished writing, like our idea for “Exceptions to the Rule.” (Fae, do you remember how that one came about? I cannot remember for the life of me)

*Fae grins* Exceptions came about because of a pair of guys I saw at a Denny’s in Massachusetts. I and my best friend had gone to Denny’s for munchies at 2 in the morning and while we were there all the bars in the area were emptying out and, of course, lots of drunken folks ended up at Denny’s to try and soak up the alcohol with some food. A pair of very cute guys sat at the booth behind ours and I spent the rest of our time there not-so-subtly observing them and making up a story for them as I did. The next morning I came to Margie with my “So I had this idea…” starter and the rest is history!

See what I mean? She never stops. So that’s where this pair of authors get their ideas. They’re all over the place. We love exploring the sparks, love it even more when they flame into a full story. We never worry about running out of ideas. I worry more about completing all my favorites before I die.

*Fae grabs the mic* And that does it for our time here, we’d like to thank the Academy, the little people who let us step all over them on our meteoric rise to the….what? Oh, fine, so there are no little people, there’s no Acadamy for the gay smutty goodness we write and we’re not quite at meteoric level yet. So instead we’ll just thank the Hussies for having us and everybody who has taken the time to read our book and this blog. We love you and good night! *blows kisses*

PS. I couldn't figure out how to put the cover for our book here, so instead, here's a link to our website, our blog and to buy our book, Exceptions To The Rule! Thanks again!