The most frequent question I am asked from fans of my book series (besides when will book 3 be out) is how do you come up with the idea for a book? How a brain comes up with people, places, and a story seems to fascinate my fellow humans.
I work with a guy who asked me, “How did you write a book? Is it about you?”
“No,” I told him. “It’s fiction, something I made up.”
“So you just made all that stuff up in your head?” he asked incredulously as I nodded. “You’re weird.”
Well yes, I suppose I am weird but that’s beside the point. I guess I never thought about the fact that other people don’t find their self in a situation and think what if….
That’s how a book starts, well for me anyway. Sometimes it’s a person, or a building, or a situation I find myself in that start the wheels turning.
For my current series I think it started a long time ago. There is a building in the town next to mine that has this huge round window that used to be a bank. As a lover of all things snow globe, I thought what if that building was a bakery, and had a big snow globe window celebrating the seasons?
I wrote “Snow Globe Cafe” in one of my notebooks over fifteen years ago. That’s right, fifteen years. I didn’t have a story to go with it for a long time, but it was filed in that notebook and my brain until the right story came along.
So what if that cafe was in a small holiday obsessed town. Who would own it? What would be it’s history? The first book in the series went through a few versions before the current one was published.
Becca wasn’t even in the first rough draft. Seriously. The first book was going to be all about her daughter Sugar. As I wrote it something seemed off. I wanted to tell Becca and Eric’s story, and I didn’t like the backstory I had for Sugar.
All you Becca fans probably wouldn’t like her fate in the first version. The second version was better, but she was almost completely off page. Just like Goldilocks, the third version felt just right.
So many people see interested in how a book forms in someone’s mind I decided that while you all wait for the third installment of the Snow Globe Cafe (I’m hoping to get it out this spring), I thought I might do a little series here about how I actually came up with everything, and why I changed certain things.
Be sure to follow this blog if that’s something that would interest you!
Until next time, happy reading!
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