Perchance I am an unlikely novelist. In school, I was never particularly interested in writing although I was always an avid reader. The idea for writing my first book came in 2001, when I was helping my middle son with his second-grade genealogy report. I did some preliminary, but very minimal, research, and then set it aside. My life changed dramatically in 2016 with all my children graduated from high school and moving from our hometown of eighteen years. One day in 2017, I was bored and realized I desperately needed something new in my life, a project and a goal. I decided maybe I should revisit that old idea of writing a book. Five years later, after hours and hours of research and numerous edits, I published my first book, Token of Betrayal. Hard to imagine that a day of boredom started me down the path to a career I love, a place I never even dreamed I would be!

This got me wondering, what inspired other authors to put pen to paper and share their stories?  I received some interesting responses.

Anne M. Beggs author of Archer’s Grace:

I cannot remember a time without stories playing in my head. Whether a child on my father’s sawhorses, pretending they were real Chargers, or other tales of people, places, and adventures. Horses and my medieval fetish have always been with me. My high school artwork reveals the calling, but I was still searching, waiting for the voices, I guess.

On a trip to Disneyland when my kids were young, serendipity drove us to attend Medieval Times in Anaheim. Horses. Knights. Pageantry. I couldn’t let go. I was on fire. Who, what, I asked the universe?

The voices came to me, Dahlquin voices, and research ensued. Research – who remembers the Barnes and Nobel paper catalogs? With those books, I was living in the Middle Ages.

Telling my tales on car trips sparked my family’s interest and they demanded I write it all down. I wonder if they regret that I ask with a chuckle.

Jillianne Hamilton, author of the Homefront Hearts series:

The idea for my first historical fiction novel, The Spirited Mrs. Pringle, came from an interesting hobby I briefly tried. Warning: it’s very nerdy. I found a group on Facebook where people from English-speaking countries wrote letters to one another but LARPing (live-action role playing) as a historical character. I bought a dip pen to write my letters and created a Victorian era character named Cora who is moving to London. The hobby didn’t stick around but the character idea did. I played with the idea of an epistolary novel between Cora and her sister who becomes a reporter. While brushing my teeth one day, it struck me: they’re not sisters. They’re rivals. The reporter character is trying to bring Cora Pringle down for her manipulative spiritualism act.

My follow-up novels didn’t have that intense aha! moment attached to them but I continue to enjoy writing rebellious heroines in historical situations.

Kathryn Pritchett, author of The Happy Heart in the award-winning Paper Lantern Writers’ anthology, Unlocked:

I wrote my first novel, The Casket Maker’s Other Wife, because I wanted to get to the bottom of a family mystery. My great-great-grandmother converted to Mormonism in a small village outside Zurich in 1869. The missionary who converted her helped her immigrate to America and asked her to be his polygamous wife. She agreed and when he brought her home to a remote valley in Utah Territory, his first wife chased them both out of the cabin. She was not amused.

My father found the story of the two women’s fractious first meeting very amusing—see how women just can’t get along! But even as a kid I could see why everyone in that triangle would be fighting. I wanted to understand why my pious great-great-grandmother agreed to become a plural wife in a time when that would have been scandalous.

I began pitching the novel just as the pandemic hit with widely varying results. Given the uncertainty of the time, I decided to put it aside while I worked on another novel. Eventually, I hired a developmental editor to review it and am now incorporating her edits. Letting the novel go “cold” and seeing it through another pair of eyes has provided fresh insights as I return to the mystery that first drew me to the story.

Ana Brazil, author of The Red-Hot Blues Chanteuse:

I love murder mysteries, New Orleans, and smart, ambitious women of the past.

Many years ago, I spent a summer in New Orleans, where I researched women of the Gilded Age for my Master’s thesis. I researched by day, and at night I read a lot. Mostly mysteries. Eventually, I wondered, “what if these women came up against a crafty murderer? Could they hunt him down?” Years later, that intersection of interests—smart women, New Orleans, and murder mysteries—led me to write my first novel Fanny Newcomb and the Irish Channel Ripper.

What keeps me writing now is that I’ve found another smart, ambitious woman…Viola Vermillion, a red-hot blues chanteuse who confronts murderers in 1919. So I keep writing because I keep finding compelling women from the past that just won’t leave me alone.

Some fascinating tales of how author careers began. If you are a writer or author, what sparked you begin writing?