Every author is asked enumerable times where they get ideas for their stories. My entire writing career began with a dream. Not the dream of becoming a writer. I didn’t seriously consider doing that until sometime after I began my first novel. No, it was a dream that started me writing, a dream so vivid and compelling that I dragged out a portable typewriter (pre-computer days, a long time ago) and began to type.
That first book, a time travel, which no publisher wanted at the time, has waited to be published for almost 45 years. An editor told me the story was too unusual to sell as a first book and suggested I write a simpler romance, get it published, and after a few more books, I might be able to sell the complex stories I love most. They also say to write about something you know. So, I wrote about a woman who faked her own murder to escape an abusive marriage (I didn’t fake my death). She joined a wagon train for Oregon and hired a guide to pose as her brother. Naturally, she and the guide, with whom she had nothing in common, fell in love. That book became a Golden Heart Finalist and was published by Kensington Books a couple of years later as Tender Touch.
My most successful paperback, Forever Mine, came from a visit to an Oregon lighthouse where I saw a bridal photo of a keeper and his wife who were married there. Neither looked happy, but she appeared absolutely forlorn. I thought about what that area of the country would have been like in the waning days of the nineteenth century, what a chore it would have been simply to get to the lighthouse from the nearest town, nine miles away when there were no roads. And I wondered why they looked so unhappy.
The result: Forever Mine was born.
Taming Jenna is another story. My critique group and I were having lunch after a meeting, and I said to one of the members I knew had a quirky sense of humor to give me an idea for a new story. Without hesitation, she said, “Write about a woman who has to find a man, and the only way she can identify him is by a scar on his bottom.” The result: a lady Pinkerton who finds herself at odds with a bounty hunter after she pulls a gun on him and makes him drop his drawers. That was a fun story to write.
Another time, for some reason I can’t name, an image of a man napping in a boggy garden at a castle popped into my mind. He wakes to see a frog on his chest. It jumps at him, kisses his mouth, and Voila! he has a beautiful young, naked woman lying over him. That story took years to write and not all simultaneously, but it is published under the title, A Kiss and a Dare. It’s a paranormal take on an old fairytale and a fun read.
Ideas for novels come from many sources and what they are doesn’t really matter. What matters is that the writer is inspired by an idea that carries her through to the end of the tale and creates a vivid, compelling read. I like to believe this is what I’ve done in my books.
Charlene Raddon is the award-winning bestselling author of twenty-seven historical romance novels set in the American West and has been writing for over forty years. Five of her books were originally published in paperback by Zebra Books, later released as e-books by Tirgearr Publishing, and she is now an Indie author.
