That’s a loaded question.  For me, anyway.  I’m asked this question often and, as usual, I don’t have a pat answer.

For me, inspiration is a tricky, sort of nebulous thing.   It can come from anything.  Literally.  Except maybe a cat litter commercial. I can’t imagine that inspiring a story, but you see how my mind works, right?  That right there shows you what strange statements and ideas something as simple as word association can bring about.

My stories always start with a seed—a teeny, tiny kernel that takes root and grows over time, be it a few hours or a few days.  It’s easier for me to describe the growth of it than the origin.

I’ve gotten the idea for a story in everything from the glimpse of a bald head to a beautiful sunset to fog moving into a creepy forest.  Once the scene is set, the characters always come, begging to tell me the story of how they got there.

For The Wild Ones, the inspiration was more…traditional.  Actually, it was probably downright cliché.  It came from the chorus of a song.  From that one short, single lyric an entire story was born.  Trick and Cami’s story.  It wasn’t instantaneous, of course.  It grew and changed a lot from their first moment “on the scene” in my head, but that’s where it all started.

So, to say that I can find inspiration anywhere is pretty accurate for me.  I’ve found it in everything from a song to a tattoo, and from a street sign to a mind-numbing ten-minutes washing my hair.  For an author, there’s no such thing as non-productive or “vacation” time.  Our minds don’t turn off that way, they never rest.  They’re constantly in search of new plots and characters.  In everything we see and touch and taste, there’s inspiration.  We just have to give the seeds a place to grow.  And grow, they will.  It just takes time.