Where do you come up with this crap?

***To learn why this pictureof Queen Victoria is here, please scroll to the bottom for a History Lesson.***

Writers get this all the time. People ask where we get inspiration. It really depends on mood and how much chocolate is on hand as to how we answer. Here's my answer and only because I just bought some truffles.

The answer is

everywhere.

Okay, that's way too general. I’ll try again.

I was born with insatiable curiosity. And I grew up being told to shut-up all the time. This meant that I spent almost all my time inside my own head.

Point of fact –

A silent person is not stupid, deaf, or blind.    

I have many interests and I always go to the books when I want to know more. 

All those ideas need to be pondered and explored.  Since no one was interested in discussing, say the genealogy of the British Royal Family in regards to hemophilia, when I was a kid growing up, I had to sort all those ideas out myself.  That morphed into writing stories.

And so I began writing my own books.

Yesterday, I was watching Colonial House, a living history project on by PBS, and I wondered how they organized their community, particularly the buildings. I drove my husband crazy getting him to fix our Internet connection so I could look it up.  I didn't need to know these things.  I’m not writing a new novel set in Colonial America…yet. But I was still desperate to know. My husband understands this and he also brings chocolate too, which is probably why we’ve made so many babies together.

So the next time you're sitting at Starbucks and you see someone with an iPad and her chin resting on her hand, elbow on the table, while she stares out the window, it's quite possible she is a writer.  And you may very well be witnessing the creation of the next great best-selling novel.

Gosh, I hope it’s me.

If you want to go ask, that's fine. She won't like to be snatched out of her imaginary world though.  Better bring chocolate just to be on the safe side.

***

History Lesson:   Queen Victoria was an ambitious woman who really liked to have her way with the Prince Consort, which resulted on lots and lots of babies.  When they grew up, she married most of them to foreign rulers.  Before long, she was called 'the Grandmother of Europe.'  One of her granddaughters, Alexandra, married the last Russian Tsar, Nicholas II. 

Hemophila is genetic, but females are only carriers. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMH0001564/   It's the male offspring that get nailed with it.  Nicholas and Alexandra had four daughters and one son.  Some believe it's the fact that their only male heir had a deadly disease contributed to their downfall.  The Tsarina was terrified for her son, fell under the spell of a madman who claimed he could heal the boy, poor decisions were made, revolutionaries were pissed off, many bad things happened, and the entire family was eventually murdered.  That's it in a nutshell, but you can already see where it provides plenty of inspiration for any fiction-writer dreaming up stories about powerful families and wars and such.