I know you read a lot books by other authors. Do you ever get a sudden inspiration for a narrative of your own from a little spark in their storyline?

Jonathan Maas Great question Judith! I am certainly a reader - as you can see by my Goodreads challenge I set myself a goal of 100 books per year, and tend to surpass that. In fact, I would daresay that I am a reader first, and a writer second.

As far as inspiring the tales, my general rule of thumb is:

Non-fiction inspires the content.

Fiction inspires the style.

For non-fiction, Ed Yong's recent 'An Immense World' certainly inspired my latest - 'Klareana: The Human Child' (which I can comp you a no-strings attached copy of - message me afterwards). Other non-fiction authors that inspired are Yuval Noah Harari, Jennifer Wright, and even some genre-bending ones like Dante (his Inferno is sort of a non-fiction map of our current perception of the afterlife) and Jostein Gaarder's 'Sophie's World.'

Fiction inspires the style - one of my recent favorites is Ken Bruen's 'Once Were Cops' - each paragraph is a sentence, and each sentence pushes the tale forward in some way.

I admit, I've actually been leaning a bit too much towards the spartan prose lately - perhaps I need to read some Proust or even the notoriously long-worded academic Judith Butler.

But long story short - reading is half the game, or perhaps more than half the game.

A side note for those who don't have time to read in this day and age - try audiobooks and podcasts, particularly at times doing other things. I am into podcasts, and I listen to them while doing the dishes. The podcaster Avery Trufelman is one of my favorites, and though she does not necessarily endorse it - she inspired the tale '#EOTW.'

Regardless - I hope I answered the question Judith - and there is an open offer to you for a few comps!

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