How Do You Know if a Story Idea is a Keeper?

I have to laugh when people ask me how I got the idea for my novel By the Light of the Silvery Moon. The idea is nearly as old as my son...who will be graduating from high school this year!

It started as a contemporary telling of the Prodigal Son story from the Bible. In preparation for a writer's conference in 1997, I wrote a prologue about a young boy whose carelessness caused his mother's