Hi all, please welcome my guest for the day, Shay MacLean. Shay’s here to talk about her process for generating new story ideas, something all authors must due continually.  Shay is also celebrating the release of her erotic tale, Shooting Stars, which I’m reading now. But don’t wait for me to tell you about (although I will be post my own review 🙂 ). Follow the link to read the free excerpt and/or purchase this spicy number.

Stoking the Fires: What Ignites My Muse’s Ardor

Ideas, concepts, insight, scheme, theory…all of these can be summarized as brainchildren to a writer and his or her muse. But, what sparks the ideas of creativity for a writer thus igniting her muse, who more often than not can be finicky at the best of times and a downright bitch/asshole at the worst. Every writer has their own way of coming up with ideas for new stories. Each can be either very exacting in the details or laid back in how much information they need to begin work. In my case, I feel I am a very lucky, my muse is very laid back. He likes to feed me ideas for a work in progress slowly over the course of a couple of months most of the time.

What makes his head perk up though?

The sources of his inspiration are varied and many. If I’m trying to come up with an idea of what a story should be about, I’ll go searching through the stock photo websites. Many snippets of information have popped into my mind as I browse the images. Just last night I was searching for a picture of a dragon (one of my personal obsessions 🙂 ) to display on my website and I had the image of an existing character in my Rift Hunter Series’s love interest as a dragon shape shifter flash in my mind.

I quickly grabbed a pen and jotted down as much information as I could about what I saw and what my muse whispered to me.
The same thing happened when I was looking for new sexy pics of the week. I came across a picture of a couple dancing and a scene for a project came to mine. For that same project, I had a flash of inspiration when my husband took me out for Valentine’s Day. A café in Italy or Rome where my two heroes were talking. Later that same night, I got the image of those men meeting my heroine for the first time in a nightclub of old, like in Casablanca, where she’s singing with only a piano for accompaniment.

As a writer, everything around you, every setting, every conversation, every smell, every taste…becomes your playground and potential fodder for ideas and characters (yes, I said characters. All you writer’s know what I’m talking about 🙂  ). We’re always on the lookout for new and exciting ideas to keep our writing fresh and engaging for the reader. Just as I sat down to write this post I caught sight of a story on Yahoo’s homepage about Hidden Man Made Wonders of the World. I could definitely see using some, if not all, of them as a backdrop for a story. Even music videos have sparked ideas for characters.

About the author:
Shay has been writing ever since she can remember, penning her first short story about Tom Turkey in the fourth grade. As a teenager, she focused mainly on poetry, but still dabbled in writing shorts. She didn’t find her niche though until she started listening to the characters in her head whispering about the dark and sensual worlds to be explored in erotic romance. Now when she’s not engrossed in a great read, she listens intently when her muse murmurs seductively in her ear. She also enjoys dabbling in arts and crafts now and again. And although she isn’t an artist by any means she designed the tattoo featured in Shooting Stars. When she’s not writing she enjoys reading and spending time with her family.

You can contact her at shaymaclean@yahoo.com or on her Facebook Page.