The Inspired Part 2

I actually grew bored of blogging about myself sometime at the beginning of March, but! As it turns out, Nobody's Hero dropped a week earlier than we originally (maybe) though it (kinda) would. Which is a good thing, but it screwed up my plans to do another fun inspirations post and give it the proper attention it deserves -- which is to say not sharing a day with me trying to give crap away. Because the character inspiration stuff I have collected this time?

Awesome.

So here we go, in the same vein as The Inspired Part 1 post -- now with new authors!

First off, the lovely Cara Bristol -- who, for the record, is currently up for "best BDSM" at TRR, so check her out! When I was digging around for author inspiration for this post, Cara found a piece she'd written earlier in the year about Reckless in Moonlight, her latest release from LI.

The post is called Behind the scenes: what you DON’T see in this erotic romance, and it has some fabulous bullet points. I love the stuff about how she was inspired by growing up in Southern California (I am SUCH a sucker for a book where the setting becomes a character of its own and infuses the whole thing). Also interesting: the bits about her favorite parts.

(She does not say what inspired the kitchen sex scene. That's okay. I'm sure it's inspired enough by itself.)

Next up, a great, if vaguely scary, post from K.C. Burn. Trompe L'oeil has been on my to-read list since it dropped because -- well, okay, for one it looks super hot. But also, hey, art history nerd. Cannot help myself.

So imagine my excitement when she directed my attention to Sources of Inspiration: The Hellhole Apartment on her blog:

My first apartment was a hole, for various and sundry reasons. But I’m a writer… which means it also gave me a lot of inspiration (when I wasn’t cowering in the corner thinking I should call the cops or wondering just how many cockroaches qualified as a public health hazard).

Yeah, like that old saying, "Bad things don't happen to writers; stories happen to writers." Also, cockroaches. Ew.

Really, though, check out the post. The way she tells the story is just magnificent.

Allie Ritch was also kind enough to provide some fun inspiration for me, which -- I mean, come on, she writes books about Alien Sex. You know I'm all over that like white on rice. She mailed me this fabulous bit:

Like most writers, the inspiration for my stories can come from anywhere. I got the idea for my first erotic sci-fi romance, Switching Positions, from a conversation with a friend. We were discussing how hard it is to be a woman in today’s society. It got me thinking. Men don’t exactly have an easy time either. How would I feel if I were the one expected to make the first move, pop the question, serve as the main breadwinner, etc.? Today, women are taking over a lot of these roles, but these tasks are still predominantly expected of the men. Well, next thing you know, I’m writing a story about a planet where gender roles are reversed. Like a domino effect, I then got the idea for my Alien Sex Ed series from a passing comment I made in Switching Positions about a Sex Ed class the heroine took in school. What would a Sex Ed class on another planet be like? Voila, more ideas and more books. Now I’m currently drafting a new paranormal work that was inspired by a wildlife documentary I saw on T.V. So you see, you just never know. Inspiration can be found in the oddest places.

Preach, sister. Though I would like to throw in that it takes a particularly devious and lovely mind to come up with an alien take on the subject. Which makes me gleefully happy to know you, Allie.

Last up this time around, an excellent series of posts recently started by Missy Welsh. She recently announced some very cool news about her new short story series with Amber Allure. (I KNOW OMG.) Since then, she's been doing these fabulous "Inspiration behind the story" posts about it.

The first one is, appropriately enough, about what I believe will be the first of the AA stories to drop, Inspiration Behind the Story: What. I really like the way she describes how this picture of Joel Rush (unf those tattoos! Yes, I have a thing. No one is surprised.) hit her with the idea, so I'll just let her tell it. But it's gorgeous. The second is Inspiration Behind the Story: Come Cuddle Me -- and anyone who has seen some of the lovefest that can happen on tumblr will completely sympathize with how this one happened. (Also: adorable. Oh my god.)

So obviously I am now stalking Missy's blog to get more of these little tidbits when she allows us. And also, to stalk the release of these stories because mmmmmm short fiction.

Wow. So this post is all over the place. Which only goes to show that Allie's on the right track about finding inspiration anywhere. Hopefully I'll be able to convince more authors to do this in another month or two with me, because after only two, these are already my favorite blog posts ever. Partly, I confess, because they make me feel a little more sane -- or at least like I'm in good company. Mostly because of how they're exploding my to-read pile due to sheer awesome.

Signing off til tomorrow -- thanks again, rad authors!