Greetings everyone!
For those of you who don’t know me, my name is Nika Dixon, and I’m a romantic suspense author. I have the pleasure of being with you today here at Coffee Time Romance & More, and would love to thank the lovely folks for having me.
I had all these amazing plans of blog postings today, but alas, life decided not to grant me such an easy time of it, and I am just able to greet everyone now. So in honour of my nothing-went-right day, I’m going to use it as fuel, and answer an age old question. Where do my ideas come from?
When presented with this question, my usual answer is “my life”. Normally this earns me the standard eye-roll in return. For those of you out there who write, you will likely be nodding your head to this. There are many people (usually non-writers) who don’t understand how a day gone wrong can leave me with so many potential plot bunnies!
I am going to start off by sharing a few random things that happened to me today, and then I’ll post the story plot/scene that popped into my head because of it! Now remember, I write Romantic Suspense!
The Morning
My office building is quite restricted due to the nature of the company. There are many websites that are blocked (Facebook, etc…) and a lot of software and programs are prevented from being accessed (such as MSN). Today, after learning my department won an award for Social Networking and Innovation, discovered that one of the key websites we used was suddenly blocked and none of the employees could access it. Instead of jumping into my job first thing, I spent 30 minutes trying to get access returned, only to discover I didn’t have the ‘power’ and it had to go over my head. This put me a good 1/2 hour behind all day.
The full story that popped into place because of this?
The heroine, a young woman with an entry level position in an office building, arrives at her desk only to find her computer is on the fritz. Knowing the man in the cubicle beside her is on vacation, she logs into his computer, not realizing her login has just identified her as the thief. She soon finds herself on the run from both sides of the law… the police, who believe she’s the mastermind behind a long string of corporate thefts, and the criminals, who want the information they believe she has. Enter into the picture…(drum roll)…her ex-boyfriend. The ex, of course, is a wonderfully yummy alpha male with a serious control issue. Believing the poor, weak heroine to be in dire need of his protection, drops everything to leap to her rescue. Only he discovers his timid ex isn’t exactly the mousy little thing he left behind. She’s pushy, she’s bossy, and she doesn’t want his help.
…. and I’m sure you can see where it’s going to fall out from there!!! Definitely some hot anger and even hotter passion between those two!
The Afternoon
I teach college courses in web design and digital media. On a normal day I have close to 100 students in my lecture. Today’s class ended early, but questions from students put me over my normal time of departure and I had to rush to try to get to my son’s school in time to pick him up. Of course the gods of traffic were against me, and I was stuck behind a slow moving driver who seemed quite content with weaving side to side – from shoulder to middle line at a nice leisurely pace. The narrow road is quite twisty and left me no room to pass. So as I followed Mr. Weaving, the plot bunnies once again attacked and a scene popped into my head. Note that I was listening to the radio really loudly at this point, and singing along.
A small town Sheriff is meandering along a back highway when a small car goes careening past him, too fast and out of control. Pulling up beside the car, the Sheriff orders the young woman to pull over. Obviously frightened, the woman screams back that she can’t – the car has no brakes. The Sheriff has to do some fast thinking to get the car stopped before the twisty road drops down a steep incline to the canyon below.
…. I have the whole scene planned out in my head. Now all I have to do is come up with the rest of the plot! 🙂
The Evening
Upon picking my son up from school, I received a text message asking me to meet a girl friend for dinner almost immediately. I rushed home, picked up DH, and we all hurried to the restaurant. Upon taking our drink orders, the waiter returned and promptly dropped two full glasses of coke and a glass of ginger-ale on my friend. After cleaning the mess as best he could, the young man then returned to take our orders and promptly dropped his pen and notepad. He returned several times to ask confirmation questions about the meal order. A waitress brought out the food order, and the young man didn’t return.
Two ideas came out of this event.
1) The waiter was nervous because his sister had been kidnapped and the kidnappers told him someone would be contacting him during his shift with the ransom demand.
2) Someone poisoned the waiter and what we didn’t see was his death in the back office.
So there you have it dear readers, how something from your day can trigger a book plot, a scene, or a plot point. I’ve had all three today in spades!
Next up? A posting from my current release – SECOND CHANCES. 🙂
Hugs!
Nika
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