Glory
Wade, writes crime fiction and romance. Her debut novel, Diamonds of Fury, the first book in her Dead Husbands Never
Looked So Good series, released
July 5. Her other publishing credits include short stories and articles. Learn
more about Glory and her books at her website.
Thank you
for the opportunity to share what has inspired me. I hope that it will help
some of your readers, or at least be of interest.
Newspaper
and magazine articles are great sources. The Dead Husbands Never Looked So Good series was conceived from an
article in Jewelers Circular Keystone
magazine in the 90s. I was fascinated, if not slightly abhorred, by the idea of
converting a loved one’s cremains into diamonds. Incredulity begat curiosity,
which led to ordering a kit from the company in the article, and the long
gestation began from short story to a series of three novels. The working title
was Ashes to Diamonds, Dust to Dust,
then finalized to what you now see.
My annual
visit to Canada always provides fodder for settings, characters, and events.
The tattered curtains in my protagonist’s childhood home date back to sighting
a solitary trailer off a lonely highway in the Muskoka area. This small mobile
home also morphed into an abandoned Airstream for my purposes. Long ago, on a
day trip in British Columbia, my friend and I found a boulder in a stream back
in the woods. That memory expanded into a scene that never took place, but developed
when I put fingers to keyboard.
Characters
are a culmination of unusual people and eccentricities I see going about my
daily life—at restaurants, casinos, stores, on the street, on television. The
wheels of my creative side creak to life, building momentum until the bones of
a character are transferred to the written page for future fleshing out. Being
a bit old school, I always carry paper and several pens in my purse to jot down
the gems that come to me, for cutting and polishing into diamonds of creativity
(ideally brilliant ones).
Conversations,
overheard or with a friend, can set off a mental ding. I mull it over, twist
and mold its DNA to fit an appropriate scene or a specific character. The
zygote resulting from imagination and the actual event can create an
interesting scenario.
The
nuisances, joys, and catastrophes of life are a constant seedbed for breathing
life into my writing. It is difficult to focus on capturing the latter at the
time, but the emotions can be relived and recorded after the crisis is past.
Writing
prompts stimulate creativity in many people. A Writers Digest contest prompt resulted in a short story I wrote,
that was published in an anthology.
In my
experience, word choice is rarely addressed in the context of inspiration. Like
many authors, I enjoy reading a variety of genres. Some books reveal wonderful
verbiage. I note the phrase/clause/concept and “chew on” how I can massage it
for my writing.
In parting,
I want to add that all of our senses, including touch and smell, can inspire us,
and will make our creative endeavors vibrate with life.
Happy
writing!
Diamonds
of Fury
Dead
Husbands Never Looked So Good, Book 1
Lila
Phyllips, a back-seat beer baby, has glittering aspirations to rise from her
trailer trash beginning to a fairy tale life of true love and wealth—and lots
of diamonds.
Kicked out
by her embittered mother and abandoned by her boyfriend, 14-year old Lila goes
to live with her aunt. She blossoms from a frightened teen into a woman, savvy
in business, but conniving when necessary.
After
not-so-sparkling experiences with the opposite sex, she opens her heart to Dale
Anderson, and reveals her secrets—except one. He vows to love her forever, no
matter what. When her perfect life is shattered by betrayal and death, she is
torn between her fractured love for Dale and her desperate need for
retribution, Lila must decide—
Will Dale
be her diamond in the rough?
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