Where do you get your ideas for your books?

They’re all right up here in my head. I guess it’s divine inspiration, but it all just comes to me. Sometimes I’ll have ideas come to me in dreams. I know it sounds weird, but dreams are weird most of the time. Other times, I’ll hear something on the news and that’ll give me a spark of an idea. For example, a guy robs and bank then drives off and is found dead in his car later that day with a self-inflicted gunshot wound. My mind goes to work wondering what happened? Did he really kill himself? And then the story takes off from there. The book I write won’t be about a bank robber that ends up dead, but it’ll be a premise of someone found dead in the car from an apparent suicide…or was it? Sometimes, I’ll just methodically sit down and start jotting notes of ideas that spring to mind—brainstorming.

I get asked a lot if a storyline was based on a real life experience that I’ve had or if the characters are based on real people that I know. I hate to disappoint anyone, but I lead a pretty boring life. None of my books are based on real life experiences. I’ve never been involved in a murder investigation. I’ve never been involved in any political conspiracy. None of the characters in my fiction books are really real people…unless I make an appearance in the book. Of course, Conversations on the Bench is about real people that I knew and a real experience with them, but that’s not a work of fiction…at least not all of it. I will sometimes name characters after people that I know. People have asked me to do that from time to time, and I don’t mind obliging them but the characters may or may not be like them. I try not to make the character like the person. I don’t want to offend anyone with a description or mannerisms in the books that may not be flattering.