Before my mother was born (the youngest childe in her family), her parents took in a hobo who had hurt his arm quite badly. Before his arm healed completely, my grandfather was injured in a work-related accident, and had to go away to the big city for medical care. While he was gone, the hobo took over running my grandparents' farm, and he proved to be a very good worker who would take no pay. When my grandfather came home and was well enough to work again, the man left, followed by my sobbing aunts and uncles who had grown quite fond of him. He was able to distract them by pointing out something amazing in one direction, and when they turned to look, he hid himself, and they never saw him again.

I wanted to tell that story, and I tried to, but it just wasn't coming together for me.

There was also a story in my mother's family about her having a pet coyote pup when she was very young, though she doesn't remember it.

Then I heard about an anthology of stories that had as its theme magic and music, and I put that theme together with the hobo story and the coyote story (turning the hobo into the Native American trickster, Coyote) and wrote a novelette (over 10,000 words) in a day and a half that I titled "A Song for the Coyotes."

I didn't sell it to the anthology, however, and now I'm thinking about lengthening it into a YA novel.

In the second, there are a set of fantastical characters who are obviously not entirely human, yet are comfortable in modern day Amercia.

As can sometimes happen when one mixes volatile materials, they can bleed one into the other with unexpected results.

Under the influence of copious gallons of coffee, very dark chocolate, a sweet old port, and slipstream music I began to expound on one of the shorts. It quickly took on a life of its own, and I began copying entire other shorts into its unfolding plot. After feeding it several of these, I soon had ten thousand words, and spent several months polishing.

The moral of this tale is that not all new stories begin with new ideas; but rather, old ideas and old stories, glued together in new, and perhaps unique voices can take on a power and life of their own.

I immediately had two ideas: firstly, that it was not a tetherball, but a head with long hair, and secondly, that this should be a Western.

Then I had second thoughts. A Western? What kind of Western would have a dog chewing on a head hanging from a pole? Well, the answer was a horror/western, naturally.

Once I accepted this unusual (for me) goal, I had to determine what the conflict was that led to someone's head hanging from a pole. Revenge came to mind, and I just went on from there.

...so then I imagined: aliens come and do to us what whites did to the Indians. We're in reservations in the least desirable parts of Earth; how about the North Slope? This gave me Symbiosis, about an alien baby coming to such a human reservation.

C S Lewis said that if Shakespeare is to meet Hamlet, Shakespeare must write himself into the play. This gave me The Glitch (published!), in which the inhabitants of a computer program figure out their world is unreal.

It was an informal get-together that was going well until A) the hosts ran out of avocado dip, and B) a bunch of fraternity guys crashed it.

They were almost sterotypical: big and bulky and extremely demanding, and as I sat on the couch watching them stumble about, I thought: what if they weren't college students, but aliens in disguise? And stranger still, what if their ships were fueled by avocado dip -- and the party they'd infiltrated had just run out of the stuff?

It was a very silly story, but I enjoyed writing it all the same.

I also was studying American Sign Language, and I got interested in alternative modes of communication, other than verbal. This led me to look at the messages that people in the Victorian era assigned to flowers.

The first was about an old Nazi hunter, who thinks he's going insane. He's being plagued by an acerbic little cherub, who tries to talk him into giving up his obsessive hold on life.

The second was about a mage--burdened by a lifetime of terrible deeds done in his search for power--waiting on the Outer Banks of North Carolina on the worst storm in recorded history.

Then the question began to go into deeper subjects. Is WHAT you are actually more important than WHO you are? Does your past really matter in shaping your future? Is there a certain amount of freedom in starting anew?

Along the way I have picked up additional characters who are exploring different facets of the same question. One character is certain he knows what he wants for his life and his future. He's completely satisfied with his plans; only to have his world disrupted and his plans overturned. He then begins to discover that maybe he wants something completely different, after all.

I love the process of writing. It's such a wonderful avenue of exploration, and the fact that my characters continue to surprise me is my greatest delight. I can't wait to find out what else my book is about!