If you’re a writer, I bet you’ve been asked, more than once, “Where do you get your ideas?” And if you’re a reader, maybe you’re reading our blog wondering, where do these authors get their ideas?

I can’t always say precisely where an idea came from. Once in awhile I hear something or see something that triggers an idea and a book comes from there. BLACKTHORNE’S BRIDE began this way. I heard a speaker tell a story about two couples who eloped to Gretna Green and the drunk anvil priest accidentally married the wrong couples.

But it’s rare for me to have such obvious inspiration. I couldn’t begin to say where the idea for WHEN DASHING MET DANGER, PRIDE AND PETTICOATS, or GOOD GROOM HUNTING generated.

I’m not exactly sure where the idea for THE MAKING OF A DUCHESS, my June release, came from either. But I have my suspicions.

When I was in high school, one of my favorite books was A TALE OF TWO CITIES. You’ve read it, right? If you hated it, or hated Dickens, please, please go get a copy and give it another try. Really. You’ll like it better now that you’re not 14. Not only did I love that book in high school, I ended up teaching it to sophomores for four years. It was then I learned to really appreciate the stylistic elements and Dickens’s skill as a writer.

But it was always the story that drew me—the bloody French Revolution, the father locked in a prison cell for almost eighteen years, the love triangle between Lucy, Charles Darnay, and Sydney Carton. I wanted to write a story with the backdrop of the French Revolution, and I wanted to write a story set in London and Paris.

I think when you read THE MAKING OF A DUCHESS you’ll see elements from A TALE OF TWO CITIES that inspired me.

What about you? Are there any books that inspired you?