Dreaming of Puppets

Inspiration. Sometimes it’s an armadillo attack. Sometimes it’s more mundane. (This is me, trying to bang out a writing related post -- just don’t expect it to be all erudite and filled with proper information and stuff… I’ll leave that to some of my fellow LI authors.)

Anyhoo… For those of you who don’t know me, I have two books out with Loose Id (Wolfsbane & Blood Relations in the MIA Case Files series). In these books, I’ve got entities called Umbrae which infect humans, creating mythological or folklore monsters. And MIA is the secret agency that combats them. Simple enough, right? But I thought I’d tell you a bit about my inspiration for them.

Dreams spawn a hell of a lot of my story ideas. Most of the dreams I remember involve blood and death, serial killers, someone trying to kill me, or a combination thereof. Fabulous material, although I suspect my brain is a nasty pit stop on the way to crazy town.

One night, though, I had a particularly vivid dream -- secret agents investigating paranormal phenomenon, angst-y romantic conflict between gruff Carmichael and sweet Adam, and even the stoic senior agent, Oliver, who is the hero of the manuscript I’m working on now. However, the paranormal being they were investigating? Uh… a fifty foot Oscar the Grouch-type monster. Kinda destroyed the whole ’secret’ thing, and didn’t do much for the scary-ness, although it was terribly impressive when he/it stomped all over the local football stadium.

It was a great start, but for a viable villain, I needed to start ’what-if’ing. And, OMG, actually plotting! Many a drive to work was spent toying with options. Probably I shouldn’t admit that I’d written two thirds of the first draft of Wolfsbane (which was sans title for a loooong time) before I hit on the Umbrae. The inspiration for Blood Relations was a little more simple, especially since I‘d already come up with the Umbrae, although it was also a dream. Unfortunately, if I tell you, it gives away the climax. Suffice it to say, Cooper’s black moment is pretty darn close to the way I dreamt it.

Some might say I’m in need of therapy and/or medication. I say I have a head full of creatively helpful nonsense. To-may-to, to-mah-to. Regardless, at times when I’m slated to write ten blog posts over the next month… inspiration is a handy-dandy topic.

Ummm… blog post starts out okay… but scrambles a bit looking for a solid finish…

Anyone got any good places they’ve found inspiration?

KC Burn