Inspiration strikes me often. In the shower, in the car, while I'm cooking dinner, thoughts play out like those weird deep-sea creatures in the back of my head, and sometimes, they pop up to the surface as something I need to write down immediately. Usually, they're just shards of ideas, a line or a scene.
In the case of Second Calling, my fated soulmates romantasy novel, one idea popped into my head quite a long time ago, and I jotted it down in a document on my computer. I grew up watching Labyrinth, and it's one of those movies that helped shape the weirder part of my brain. I can't be the only one who wanted to stay and live with Jareth the Goblin King, right? I was talking to a friend about this, and a character and scene popped into my head. I imagined a woman slipping into a world like the one in Labyrinth, and finding a bitter and cruel Prince. He plays tricks on her with magic, and after examining her, he finds she has demons in her heart. She wants them out, of course, but he just sits on his throne and laughs her off.
The next piece came when I thought about how this woman ended up in this situation. That's when my first line came to me: The summer I turned thirteen, I ran away from home three times. Lena was meant to arrive in this other realm when she was only thirteen, but each time she dashed out to the woods where the portal between worlds was open on the full moon, something stopped her. She never made it to her soulmate, and that's why he's so aloof and angry. Lena formed into my head - a woman who's reached her 30s who feels like she's missed her calling and has no purpose in life. Her parents passed away when she was young, she's just lost her retail job, her love life is a disaster, and the friends who promised to always keep in touch haven't reached out in ages. I wrote out that first chapter in my "story ideas" document, and left it at that.
What really kick-started this story was a third piece of inspiration - about a month ago, a friend told me a story of a girl who'd had an accident that needed medical attention, and a male bystander who was helping her heaped on praise as it was happening - "You're so strong, you're doing so great, you can get through this, I'm right here with you." That kind of thing. Very bizarre inspiration, but honestly, the idea of it had me kicking my feet and giggling. I knew then that I needed to write a man like that, and my cruel Prince was the one who popped into my head. He's trying hard to reject his soulmate after she didn't show up for him, but their bond is so strong that when Lena is going through a bout of pain, he can't help but to rush to her side and support her like that. From there, the ideas started flowing into me, concepts of fate, soulmates, sacrifice, outcasts and fitting in, kings and princes and princesses who thrive in a world of petty politics, realms that exist only in the night, all of it started to come together.
I'm still actively working on Second Calling, but I hope it can be the kind of story that makes people kick their feet and giggle. That's always the dream.