What story has recently inspired/moved you?
I haven’t read a published book in nearly two years. I’ve been sucked into the writing community (Scribophile), where I’ve been critiquing as a beta-reader. I’ve read dozens of completed manuscripts and have gained my inspiration from those unpublished works. A fellow author, Susan Boesger, posted her urban/contemporary fantasy on the site when I first joined. I gobbled up the first book and devoured the second book. I’d never read anything about magical beings, mythology, or the like. It opened my eyes to another world, one that I wanted to be a part of. Her novels sparked the idea of Blue Ruin in my head. I wanted to have magic. I wanted to turn the real-world into a place where dark shadows weren’t simply shadows, but hiding places for Vampires. For other-worldly creatures. I wanted a world in which everything didn’t seem as it was. I’d been a writer of Dark Fantasy prior to reading her novels, but she showed me the world of urban/contemporary fantasy, to which I melded it to my liking for Blue Ruin.
Stories are big inspirations to me, but music holds the key to unlocking my inspiration. For every novel, I have a playlist that can really bring me to that place I need to be in order to write. It gets the creative juices flowing. I envision scenes within my novels that would go well with a song. My planning is very visual, and then during the writing, it’s very mechanical — in the sense that I plan the sentence structure, narrative, and the aesthetics of the writing.
I’ll share my playlist for my published novel, Blue Ruin, as well as the sequel, New Dawn.
BLUE RUIN
1. My Demons – Starset
2. Jungle – X Ambassadors
3. Deep Shadow – TTL (instrumental song)
4. So Cold – Ben Cocks
5. Sunshine (Adagio in D Minor) – John Murphy (instrumental song)
6. Young and Beautiful (DH Orchestral) – Lana Del Ray
7. Heaven Knows – The Pretty Reckless
8. Everybody Wants to Rule the World – Lorde
9. No Light, No Light – Florence and the Machine
10. Beyond Fire – TTL (instrumental song)
11. Demons – Imagine Dragons
12. Devil’s Backbone – The Civil Wars
13. Blindfold – Sleeping Wolf
14. Control – Halsey
NEW DAWN
1. Take Me to Church – Hozier
2. Dark on Me – Starset
3. It Has Begun – Starset
4. Confession – Red
5. Dance with the Devil – Breaking Benjamin
6. Four Rusted Horses – Marilyn Manson
7. My December – Linkin Park
8. My Lover’s Gone – Dido
9. My Heart is Broken – Evanescence
10. Burn – In This Moment
11. The Infection – In This Moment
12. Fighter – In This Moment
13. Oh My My – Ruelle [Evrene/The Ammit Song]
14. Bad Intentions – Digital Daggers
15. Hollow – Breaking Benjamin
16. Close Your Eyes – Digital Daggers
17. Compelled [Instrumental] – Jack Trammell
What books have inspired you?
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Blue Ruin is Book One in The Phoenix Series. Blue Ruin is a New Adult, Dark Fantasy, Paranormal, Supernatural, Gothic novel. It is now available for purchase in the Kindle Store.
“A hunter and the hunted, Maura Leroux is one of the last of her kind with a dark past that has haunted her. With black magical beings having been hunted for centuries, she’s come to learn a thing or two about survival. But Adrian Wilhelm, a notorious Vampire, threatens to destroy Maura’s newfound life as a detective in the magical world of Mystics. Adrian intends to use Maura as a means of resurrecting the fallen world of black magical beings, Abysm. Maura has made it her mission to stop Adrian while covering her tracks from those that have been seeking her out for centuries.”