One question that writers often get asked is how do you come up with your ideas? For me ideas come from many different sources. Even paranormal stories usually have some spark of reality. In my recent novella, Silk Bonds, the heroine has undergone a major lifestyle change. After being injured in an accident, she is unable to pursue many of the sports she has built her life around. She also must deal with the guilt of losing a beloved pet in the same accident. When she meets the hero, he helps her confront her guilt and heals her physically through his supernatural powers.
The reality of this story was partly inspired by personal experience. Though I have never endured an accident as serious as my heroine’s, I did have an injury that prevented me from continuing a sport I’d been involved in for most of my life. In a way, Lourdes’ story had been building in my mind since then. The idea of somehow wiping out an incident can be appealing, however every incident makes a character, or a person, who they are. Fantasy meets reality when Alexi is able to heal Lourdes’ body, but he cannot erase the actual experience of the accident. Though he restores her physically, she still cannot return to her old life because the changes she underwent were emotional as well as physical. Too much has changed inside her. She must come to terms with her guilt and what she learned about how the consequences of her decisions affect others.
In reality there is no magical cure for anything. Even if we heal enough to return to a previous lifestyle, changes have still occurred inside us. That’s what life is about. Even forced changes are sometimes good because they help us explore different paths. If for some reason one aspiration doesn’t work out, then there are others waiting to be pursued, even if it takes some time to find them. Lourdes learns to use her past experiences, both good and bad, to fight new battles in Alexi’s world.
Romance fiction is about blending fantasy and reality. What are some of your favorite “what if” situations. What fantasies inspired by reality capture you as a reader or motivate you as a writer?
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