Thursday, July 18, 2019

BOOK CLUB FRIDAY--AUTHOR INSPIRATION FROM GLORY WADE

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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