Goodreads asked Susan Wingate:

Where did you get the idea for your most recent book?

Susan Wingate Every morning around 6:30, I go out with a bowl of oats, corn and barley to feed about 16 deer. I say about because sometimes there are fewer and sometimes there are more deer.

Being out there with them, walking among these noble graceful creatures stirs something in me. I have a fondness for the deer like no other wild animal I've been exposed to. I love their eyes. :) Anyway, my mind goes to "Story Time" and you'll often find me plunking away about them during my writing time.

On this latest book, however, this is what happened. It was a chilly fall morning and I decided to take my dog, Robert for a walk. Were my husband and I fighting? I really cannot remember but what happened next spurred on the story.

Robert and I turned a corner and saw a downed deer. She had been hit by a car near another turn a ways down the road. She was dead by the time we got there. Thank God. But I bent down to touch her. To somehow soothe the incident if that were at all possible. I placed my thumb on her forehead and softly rubbed the sign of the cross on her. It was so sad.

See, she may have been one of my deer. I feed them. They come, all seventeen or so, each morning for oats, corn and barley and to loll about in our pasture out back.

It was while I was bending to console her that I thought, "Robert and I could get hit by a car too if we don’t get off the road."

Anyway, the story flooded my every thought and before I knew it, I’d written THE DEER EFFECT.

Also, a note about the dog character, Bobby. He's fashioned after my dog, Robert. And I think it's more than a bit humorous that I didn't name him in the story something else, like Daniel or Rupert, even. :)

Thanks for asking. ~Susan.

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