Goodreads asked Sam Wiebe:

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

Sam Wiebe Influence and inspiration are tricky. You'd think you'd know what inspires you, wouldn't you? But there are unseen forces at work; writing is still somewhat mystical.

For LAST OF THE INDEPENDENTS, obviously the crime and detective novel tradition, from Doyle and Chandler on to Grafton, Mosely, Josephine Tey, is very important. But it's a novel set in Vancouver, focused on young people trying to stay afloat in the businesses they love. Real life and experience has to enter in somewhere.

Then there are philosophical questions that power a novel. William James differentiated evil actions into those which are "ministerial to higher forms of good," and those for evil's own sake. But how would someone ever know the difference?

Similarly, Kierkegaard defined a hero as someone willing "to risk unreservedly being oneself, an individual human being...alone in this enormous exertion and this enormous accountability.” What would that mean in 2014, when owning a house or keeping your small business alive is a semi-heroic endeavor?

Once the conversation works round to Kierkegaard, you know it's in trouble.

The short answer is, I read a lot and try to keep my ears open.

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