"Where do you get your ideas?"

Possibly the most asked question of any writer, from Stephen King and J.K. Rowling down to little ole me is "Where do you get your ideas?" Well, actually, the question I'm asked most is "Do you know how to get to Pizza Hut from here?"--second only to "Why is your nose that funny shape?"--but you get the idea. I don't know how Stephen King answers the question (and he must be asked it a billion times a week) but my answer is an unfaltering I Don't Know.

Of course, that's not really true, either. Every idea comes from life, in same way shape or form. Some thought comes from your everyday comings and goings and you twist it, turn it, set it on fire, change it, and then it becomes the germ of a story.

Take my novel Pale As a Ghost, for example. It's about a private detective in Indianapolis who has a best friend that's a centuries old witch, a bulldog named Daisy that's a zombie, and his late boyfriend is a ghost who still hangs around. And this sprang from real life. Easy to see, right?

Well, in a weird, twisted way, it did. My golden/beagle mix, Jadzia, was losing her eyesight to glaucoma. She'd recently had her right eye removed and looked a little...scary. If you didn't know her, you might run in fright. She became the template for Daisy. The rest just followed.

And at work one day a young, rather egotistical guy said to me, "You should put me in a book." He thought he was incredibly good looking and someone should take advantage of that. I told him I would, but that I'd have him nibbled to death by squirrels. And from that brief encounter came the plot to the 2nd Duncan Andrews book, Animal Instinct. And yes, the book contains a scene where someone is killed by squirrels. Take that, (name withheld because he's bigger than me)!

So that's where stories come from. Life. Just seen through very distorted lenses.