I’ve been thinking a lot about what inspires me to write.

There are the usual suspects:

 
• – Feeling different and crazy and lost in high school.
• – The worlds I wished I could live in & the things I wished I could do in them.
• – People I’ve loved & people I’ve hated (hint: they usually get killed in my books & stories).
• – My personal demons (you know, those voices in our heads we can never quite escape).
• – Music I’m listening to; lately, it’s lots of Soundgarden, Bruno Mars, Velvet Revolver, The Smiths, The Killers, The White Stripes, old U2, Adele & Kings of Leon.

Inspiration comes from a million different places, but when I started UNBREAKABLE & the short stories I wrote for two upcoming anthologies, I noticed that my writing inspiration was coming from another place.

Images.  Pictures I couldn’t get out of my head & I pieced together to create places, characters & narratives that seemed to come out of nowhere.  I’m not sure why it surprised me.  I used to be a mixed media artist & my paintings incorporated found images that never quite fit together until you created the story of the painting in your mind.  I never titled the paintings for exactly that reason.  I didn’t want to influence the viewer’s story.

This one is hanging in the hallway in my house…

So I started collecting images,  Pinterest account, a great way to save images by project or category.  I tend to update it all the time if you want to see what’s going on in my head (or find a great pie recipe).

Here are some of the images that inspired UNBREAKABLE, my solo novel that releases in fall 2013 & short stories that will be published in two upcoming anthologies (Melissa Marr’s SHARDS & ASHES and one that is unannounced).