03January 2013

Inspiration

People often ask me how I come up with my stories.
What was my inspiration?
So, I looked back on my recent projects and tried to remember the original spark that ignited each story.
I love learning about history and also the paranormal. In my YA and MG stories I usually try to meld the two together.
A Promise Stitched in Time is the story of a girl looking for inspiration for a painting she needs to complete in order to win a scholarship to a prestigious art school. She goes to her local thrift shop and is drawn to a tweed coat. She brings the coat home and strange things begin to happen. Is the coat haunted or is something else at work?
I remember walking around a thrift store myself, looking at vintage coats and hats and wondering what were the chances of someone being reincarnated and happening upon an object they’d owned in a previous life. Would the object trigger past memories? Wouldn’t it be cool if it did—or would it be too much to handle? What if the object was lost under dire circumstances–perhaps stolen.
Then I remembered reading about two girls who were held prisoner in the attic of the Commandant of Auschwitz. The girls were forced to make clothing (using fabric from the clothes stolen from their people) for the Nazi family. The identity of the girls was never discovered. What if my reincarnated girl was one of those girls imprisoned in that attic? Cool idea, yes? That’s where I started with this story.

Tomorrow I’ll tell you about my story inspired by a documentary on coma patients. It’s a freaky idea, but not totally out of the realms of possibility. For that story I actually did some very interesting hands on research.