Writers and Their Ideas by Aria Kane

"Where do your ideas come from?"
Authors get asked this question at nearly every event or interview we do.
People don't like the real answer. They want us to spill our secret, to tell them there's a secret fountain of book ideas somewhere, and I can tell you where it is. People want an exciting answer, but the real answer is boring.
The real answer is: everywhere. Anywhere.
A writer can literally stare at their own belly button lint and come up with an idea for a story. Writers can see a picture of an old lady sitting on a park bench and have a backstory for her written in our heads in five seconds. Very few of us can read about a new technology without imagining how it can go terribly, terribly wrong. We stare into space while our loved ones are talking and get up in the middle of a sentence to jot down an idea. Thousands of ideas start with the simple phrases "What if..." or "I wonder..." A writer will see an intriguing person walking down the street and, suddenly, he's a secret agent on a mission to save the world – or maybe he's just been fired from his job and desperately trying to figure out to pay rent.
Story ideas are crawling all around us, clamoring for attention.

For example, the idea for Love and Other Games came from an ESPN.com article and the phrase "70,000 condoms wasn't enough." (link: http://www.usatoday.com/story/happyeverafter/2013/10/03/love-and-other-games-anthology-winter-olympics/2912861/) The idea for Once Upon a Darkness came from flipping through a Brothers Grimm collection in the midst of Walking Dead mania.
The universe is ripe with ideas in every nook and cranny. Everybody wonders about the world around them. Writers just recognize it for what it is: a story idea. 

Aria Kane is a recovering mechanical engineer and romance writer. As a military brat, she grew up all over the country, but now lives in sunny Florida with a 60 lb mutt who thinks he's a chihuahua. She's the author of Love and Other Games, Once Upon a Darkness, and A Titan for Christmas.
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