I'm going to share secrets today - and let you know what planted the seeds for two of the stories included in my recently published collection, Naked Ladies - Seasons of the Heart. Here's a link to the book, if you haven't seen it yet.
http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/349717
The first story in the book is St Paddy's Day Leprechaun," (Cheryl's story). Here's the story's blub, "Cheryl's world is crumbling around her. With a convict for a husband, now she's lost her job, and has no prospects for future work. When her favorite holiday finally rolls around, so does a powerful storm. With no electricity and flood waters rising around her, she feels overwhelmed. Should she let herself, and her car, just wash away to end the misery?"
This story is not biographical, although sometimes I do insert biographical elements into my stories. For this story, I used a random writer's trick to generate an idea. I placed possible story elements on small slips of paper into different envelopes, like holiday, weather, situation, animal. For this story, the holiday slip was 'St. Paddy's Day'; the weather slip was 'rainstorm'; the situation was 'job loss in midlife'; and the animal was 'squirrel.' Somehow Cheryl's story came together from those four elements. It was not plotted beforehand, although it was edited afterward.
The second story in the book is "The New Year's Curse," Shannon's story. Once again, the story idea began with my element envelopes: holiday was 'New Year's Eve'; weather was 'snowy'; situation was ' fear of relationship breakup' and the animal was 'puppy.' The story's blurb reads, "Shannon has had bad luck with boyfriends lately, and her breakups all have one thing in common, the breakups happen on New Year's Eve. This year, she's in love with Justin, and scared. Will she be alone once more come New Year's Day?"
If you're curious about the other eight stories in Naked Ladies - watch for Thursday's post about how I came up with "Unlikely Deliverance" and "The Liar."
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