Where Book Ideas Come From by Matt Cost

Book ideas are like apples on an apple tree in the fall. Abundant and ripe for the picking. Some people fill a basket with them and then pull them out when wanted while others just pluck one off and bite right into it. I fall into the third camp of gathering a few of them and biting in when the time is ripe.

Many of these ideas come from the world around us. Mind Trap was inspired by a newspaper story about a cult, which led down the rabbit hole of cults. They are all around us, large and small, radical and reserved, and in all shapes and forms. The ones that go bad are the ones we hear about. Jonestown. Waco. Manson. But what about the ones we don’t hear about?

Mouse Trap originated in a news story about Jackson Laboratories in Bar Harbor. They have been experimenting on mice to alter the DNA in the embryo of the pregnant females in an effort to eradicate disease such as diabetes and cancer in humans. It turns out that mice and people share almost 99% of the same DNA. In other words, the experiment on mice is in preparation for being used on humans through a process called CRISPR. This presents the reality that it can also be used to create Super Babies.

Cosmic Trap is based on the fact that NASA, airplane pilots, and radar technicians on a regular basis see aerial phenomena that cannot be explained. As a result, Congress appointed a task force a few years back to investigate this Unidentified Aerial Phenomena, or UAPs. They recently got back with their findings. There is definitely something up there. They have no idea what. Is it the Russians or Chinese? Is it a secret U.S. wing of the military? Is it aliens? A mysterious world CABAL? All good questions.

The idea that germinated and grew into Pirate Trap occurred when I was a bit shy of four years old. My mother owned a bookstore in Henniker, New Hampshire, and the local college kids would hang out there and in front with me, making me their unofficial mascot. We had many a bizarre discussion that sparked my creative juices at that age, but much later, realized was probably sparked by them being on hallucinogenic drugs. One day they took me on a treasure hunt through town, culminating in finding a chest filled with gold-foil chocolate coins, eye patches, water pistols, and good ole pirate things. Followed by Peter Pan and Treasure Island and you get a book.

Fidel Castro, Joshua Chamberlain, and the fight for equal rights in New Orleans after the Civil War sparked historical fiction ideas into books. Recently, I decided to put my love of histories and mysteries together and Velma Gone Awry was created, about a PI in 1923 Brooklyn. The sequel to that, City Gone Askew, is the reverse idea of Mouse Trap. Before we had genome editing to curry popular traits and negate supposed unfavorable traits, we had the eugenics movement. This was very popular in the U.S. in the 1920s and was the basis for a great deal of Adolf Hitler’s ideology.

What would happen if the Eugenics Movement, the KKK, and Hitler had banded together? Terrifying. But a good idea for a book. City Gone Askew.

About the Author

Matt Cost was a history major at Trinity College. He owned a mystery bookstore, a video store, and a gym, before serving a ten-year sentence as a junior high school teacher. In 2014 he was released and began writing. And that’s what he does. He writes histories and mysteries.

Cost has published five books in the Mainely Mystery series, with the fifth, Mainely Wicked, just released in August of 2023. He has also published four books in the Clay Wolfe Trap series, with the fifth, Pirate Trap, just released on March 27th, 2024.

For historical novels, Cost has published At Every Hazard and its sequel, Love in a Time of Hate, as well as I am Cuba. In April of 2023, Cost combined his love of histories and mysteries into a historical PI mystery set in 1923 Brooklyn, Velma Gone Awry. City Gone Askew will follow in July of 2024.

Cost now lives in Brunswick, Maine, with his wife, Harper. There are four grown children: Brittany, Pearson, Miranda, and Ryan. A chocolate Lab, a basset hound, and a chihuahua round out the mix. He now spends his days at the computer, writing.