I’ve been asked more times than I
can count, “Where do you get your ideas for stories?”
They often come from real life.
My new release came from my past.
My recent book, due out in
February, She Cried Wolf, the bad guy
was born before my hero and heroine. I built my story around him. He came to
life on a warm fall day as I sat at a stop light at a busy intersection. The
little crossing man blinked and he stepped off the curb right into my line of
sight, walking past my car. The slumped lumbering walk and slanted furrowed
brows slammed into my memory unexpectedly. I recognized him immediately and
held my breath. He looked into my car with ice blue pale eyes that didn’t
register my existence. A shudder drove right up my spin, as I waited for him to
pass, and the light to change. My hands were in a death grip on the steering
wheel. I had my grandkids in the car, and was grateful for the habit of locking
the doors as soon as the seatbelts click. They were chattering away in the
backseat unaware of what I just witnessed. They were finishing up the rest of
their cones from the ice cream shop. The experience left me momentarily dazed
and shaken as their happy voices drifted into a long tunnel.
I worked in law enforcement for
over twenty years, retiring six years ago, to a quiet life of grandchildren and
writing. I left behind the violence I had witnessed and experienced. I’m left
with reminders of those days on cold damp mornings when old injuries remind me.
On that warm sparkling fall day, I was reminded again of my past life. The man
in question, I had arrested and dealt with numerous times throughout my career.
He aggressively fought every arrest, which usually ended with numerous personal
threats against me and my family. The last time I saw him, he was booked into
jail on parole violations, at which time he threatened to wipe out my gene
pool. That afternoon, my gene pool sat behind me, innocently teasing each
other.
The sight of him kept nagging at
me. I doubted he recognized me. In the ten years since I last saw him, I had
changed with weight and hair color. He had only aged. I noticed as he crossed
the street, he was lips moved in a muttering fashion, and his clothes were
disheveled. He carried a backpack. My first guess he was homeless. My second
guess, his mental illness had progressed, taking him into the situation in
which he lived.
In the following days one of my main
characters for my story was born. I didn’t use the situation where I knew the
individual. Instead I used the moment I saw him crossing the street. I worked
with victims of stalkers and saw firsthand how it alters their lives. I
imagined the terror of seeing the perpetrator cross the street in front of
their vehicle on a warm sunny day after so many years. My story gave birth.
From there, I developed my bad
guy and why he had never forgot and found the innocent woman he stalked years
before. The story was there, but I didn’t have a heroine yet. I named her after
my mother’s favorite aunt, before I gave her life in description. Then the hero
and how he would enter into the heroine’s world. I decided he was her
contractor and friend, the only person who believed she saw her tormentor after
so long. I named him for my grandson’s
best-friend in school, Rio. I loved the name and it so suited my hero.
From there the story took off
like a bullet. Everything meshed together. I could describe my bad guy down to
the finest details, because I knew him. I took this story and put it in San
Francisco. Having lived and worked in area for forty years.
It’s strange how stories come to
us at unexpected moments. Although, when I saw him, I didn’t have any idea I’d
write about those feelings. I just wanted to get off the street with my precious
cargo. But the incident stayed with me. Like so many authors, I drew from the
experience and created, She Cried Wolf.
The idea behind the concept followed when I told my husband about what I saw,
and he questioned if I’d recognize him. Bam, another idea was born. What if a
woman who had been stalked had imagined sightings of her stalker over the
years, to the point when she really saw him, no one believed her.
I’ve taken all the concepts and
put them together, and I had a my story of Irene Carlotti, when she sees the
man who kidnapped, tortured and rapped her thirty years ago. She has no alias
to assist her, accept in one person her contractor, Rio DeJesus a retired FBI
agent.
An entire story born out of a
moment of fear from the past.
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