Goodreads asked Andrew Beahrs:

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

Andrew Beahrs Taking "most recent" to mean "most recently completed," that would be The Big South Country (out, most likely, in June). A couple of years ago I was sitting in the Peet's on Berkeley's Telegraph avenue, reading about Pacific ocean life--one of my passions--when I had a sudden and vivid mental picture of a man standing on a cliff in Big Sur. He was a hulking presence, dressed in a Gold Rush era greatcoat and wide-brimmed hat, staring out to sea at a lifeboat drifting towards shore after a storm. It seemed clear that hated the prospect of the boat's arrival, and was trying to decide how best to stop it from coming ashore. That picture--drawn, I think, from The Tempest, along with recent reading about Gold Rush clipper ships I'd been doing for a separate project, and set in a place I dearly love--was the spark of The Big South Country, and became the novel's opening scene.

It wasn't unlike how The Sin Eaters came to me, though in that case the mental picture was of a character I already knew burning down her house. It occurs to me now that both pictures appeared in cafes; from time to time I try to dial back my coffee addiction, but maybe I should just lean into it and accept that my jagged nerves can sometimes shake something loose.

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