Where to get ideas

Sometimes, when you're walking nowhere in particular or doing the dishes or showering, a scrap of a story enters the mind. A character's name or voice, a line or two. It's like the end of a thread of unknown length.

Sometimes that scrap, that thread end, leads to an entire story or novel or series. Sometimes it fizzles. Sometimes it mutates into something else. But it's a gift. The mind slips into that neutral zone and something unexpected surfaces.