Out of Thin Air

It’s probably an occupational hazard. Every now and again I’m asked, “Where do you get your ideas?” I usually reply, “From life” or “Out of thin air”. Truth be told, I don’t know where my ideas come from really. Like manna, they fall out of the sky and I just pick them up.

In 1982, I read a story in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine introducing a female cozy sleuth. The editor complained about the lack of female sleuths. There just weren’t enough of them. The story was “Meet Athalia Goode” by Raleigh Bond. The editor hoped we’d see more of Ms Goode. Unfortunately, I don’t think Mr Bond chronicled any further adventures. At least a Google search produced none.

What immediately popped into my mind was the name Athalia came from the Greek meaning “truth”. My mind drifted to Latin and in a flash Justinia Wright was born. Truth and Goodness. Justice and Right. One Greek. One Latin. For seven years I did nothing with Justinia Wright. Then one day I learned there were caves under Minneapolis. In a flash, that manna falling from heaven, I picked up a mystery involving my job at the welfare office, caves under Minneapolis, and my interest in Aztecs. I wrote the mystery and set it aside. Twenty-five years later, I rewrote the novel and published it last year as Festival of Death. Unlike Mr Bond, I wrote three more novellas featuring Miss Wright (Trio in Death-Sharp Minor) and have a second novel in progress.

The Rocheport Saga, my post-apocalyptic, libertarian, retro-futuristic quasi-steampunk series (Book Three coming out soon), began with a single sentence and eventually ended up over 2200 manuscript pages in length. That sentence? “Today I killed a man and a woman.” Where the heck that came from I don’t know. Out of thin air most likely.

Lady Drusilla Drummond Hurley-Drummond was inspired by the very real Lady Grace Hay Drummond-Hay, who wrote for the Hearst papers in the ‘20s and 30s. Why feminists haven’t written a biography of Lady Grace is beyond me. She was a truly remarkable and very modern woman.

Information is rather scarce about Lady Grace and I don’t  pretend Lady Dru is anything like her inspiration. Lady Dru is more a superheroine figure, set in a dieselpunk alternative 1950s.

The Moscow Affair, her initial adventure, began life as a simple what if. Out of thin air I thought, what if World War 2 had never happened, and the Czarists tried to retake Russia upon Stalin’s death? And a novel was born.

All of these ideas just appeared. What’s more, they appear to everyone. Some of us just happen to see them as story ideas. Each of us has a talent. Some of us, can tell stories. Some of us can fix things. Others of us can sell, or do complex mathematics, or figure out problems. We need handymen, plumbers, electricians, mathematicians, engineers, and the like. The world would be a boring place with just storytellers. The handyman who fixed my broken chair looked at it and figured out how to fix it. Did the solution come to him out of thin air? Maybe. Sure seemed like it to me.

Each of us is unique and in our own ways, weave magic out of thin air. I’m glad we’re not all storytellers.

[Originally appeared 3 March 2015 on www.cwhawes.com]