Out of thin air

Sometimes even I wonder where I get my book ideas from. One time, I started a book based on a very weird dream I had. It was too freaky not to become the germ of a story :) About half the time, I have a theme or specific directive I need to tie a story into. The story I'm currently working on is for the DNW group. We built the shared world together, so my story elements had to conform with the world. However, I got to choose the time period for my story and the "family" line for my characters. These two elements are what really drove the story development. The "family" of my main characters are relatively well known, and certain characteristics of the family helped me to build the base for Tera and Darius. I even chose their names because of their meanings.

You can see I use a lot of little layers in my stories, and I think that's really how they come about. I get a germ of an idea and just keep painting on the layers until the story snowballs. It can be quite fun, and frustrating.