For months, I was haunted by an image that I knew was the
start of a good story. I saw a man in a fire tower looking through binoculars
at the mountain below. The man sees a car pull up to the lake. Two men and a
woman get out. It quickly becomes clear that the men intend to harm the woman.
The man in the fire tower makes the decision to head straight down the mountain
to try to save the woman. That was all I knew. It was an action packed start
for a suspense story, but I had to decide whom that man in the fire tower was
and whom the woman in jeopardy was. And why those men had taken her out in the
woods to kill her. All those questions
were answered and what started out as a dynamic scene playing in my head
eventually became my November release from Love Inspired Suspense Montana
Standoff.
Inspiration for a story can come anywhere from an overheard
conversation, to a news article, to meeting someone you know belongs in a book,
to reading a story with an ending you would have written differently. Sometimes
I hear snippets of dialogue or a scene will pop into my head. The secret is to
tease out the idea or the picture through brainstorming and asking questions to
see if there is a full book in that little kernel of inspiration.
Montana Standoff is Sharon Dunn’s 14th book. It
is a Romantic Times Top Pick for the month of November. Learn more about Sharon
and her books at www.sharondunnbooks.net
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