Raven Black asked Rachel Caine:

where do you get your ideas for a story from?

Rachel Caine Hi, Raven ... it really depends on the story. Some kind of come out of nowhere, but they're almost always the result of "what if?"

- What if ... the Great Library of Alexandria never burned?
- What if ... people could control the weather?

That sort of thing. What you get from that is a very generic idea like this:

- People would be much smarter because they would have read everything
- We wouldn't have killer storms

Then you question everything about that. WHY would people be smarter? Are we smarter today for having the Internet and so much info? I'd argue we aren't, and in fact, we've lost valuable skills at how to process and retain information. But also: if a single library controlled all books, would we have free access? Those are the *interesting* questions. So you keep turning the idea over until you find something interesting that sounds different and new.

Same thing with "people who control the weather" ... because if people could, what keeps them from using that power for profit, or revenge? Would we have *more* storms? Worse ones? Etc.

But some books come directly out of a character in a situation, or something as simple as (in the case of the Morganville Vampires) noticing a weird detail. I was driving through a very dark part of town at night and noticed the streetlights were very far apart, so I played a little game of "why" and came up with ... vampires. Vampires would put streetlights far apart, if they built a town.

Then I just had to figure out why they built it, who lived there, and why they didn't leave. :)

I hope that helps!

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