Tara asked Carol Goodman:

Where did your inspiration for the Fairwick books come from?

Carol Goodman I'd been reading a good deal of urban fantasy and co-writing the Lee Carroll books with my husband. My husband and I were also walking every weekend at a nearby estate in a bit of woods that had been overrun by honeysuckle vines. They had spread all through the woods and twisted into bizarre shapes and made tunnels and arches. The woods creaked with them in the wind as if it were a whole organism or a giant wicker basket. As I walked through them I began to imagine a house at the center of those woods that was inhabited by a spirit--an incubus. And thus the demon lover was born. Once I'd imagined him I couldn't get rid of him, much as Callie is enthralled and half-terrified by him. The story came flowing out--I had to abandon something else I was writing. My step-daughter Nora, who read each chapter I wrote, said I was possessed by the demon lovah. The rest of the books came out of my love of urban fantasy and academic settings. But that honeysuckle wood still haunts me!

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