Friday, June 30, 2017

“Where do you get your inspiration?”- The Finder by J.E. Lorin


“Where do you get your inspiration?”

As a writer, this is one of my least favorite questions. (Another: “What’s the title?” when asked about a work-in-progress, because I’m a huge procrastinator about titles.) It’s not that I think it’s a bad question. I’m actually flattered that people want to know. The problem is, I don’t always have a concrete answer.

I’m not a person who likes to use my own experiences or the experiences of people I know in my work. None of my characters look like people I know. I even try to avoid the names of close friends and family. That means all of my ideas are pure creativity, and sometimes it’s difficult to pin down the source of a particular creative thought.

My first book, The Artifact, originated from my desire to write an Indiana Jones-like tale, coupled with being too lazy to do any research. Therefore, I set it in the future, so that the historical time period my characters talked about was the early 21st century. My current idea—as yet untitled, of course—came to me one morning as I was still in bed, half asleep. I’d been working on a story with those characters but something about it just wasn’t clicking. Every night when I went to bed, it was the last thing on my mind, and every morning, it was the first. Then, one morning, the new idea came.

My most recent release, The Finder, quite literally grew out of just two words: “Help me.” They’re the words that start the novel. They were in my head for months. I couldn’t get them out. At odd moments, it would catch me: Help me. I began to imagine what that would be like for one of my characters, to be sitting there, minding his own business, and suddenly have those words pop into his brain. And somehow, the story grew from there. A whole novel that began as two simple, small words.

If all that sounds a little vague, believe me, I know it. Writing can be a tricky thing. I say this all the time, and I think my fellow writers will probably agree with it: sometimes your stories and your characters have a mind of their own. You can be writing a scene with every intention of having it end up a certain way, only to find yourself, at the end of it, with something completely different. And if you try to force it to be the way you originally envisioned, it doesn’t work. Sometimes your characters simply know better than you.

So where do I get my inspiration? It’s hard to say. Everywhere. Nowhere. Somewhere. If you have an idea of your own, you should run with it. Just start typing and see what happens. I can almost guarantee that you’ll be pleasantly surprised with the result. 

The Finder
J.E. Lorin

Genre: LGBT Sci Fi Romance

Date of Publication: March 15, 2017

ISBN: 978-1520967554
ASIN: B06XGCNBP3

Number of pages: 284
Word Count: 99,630

Cover Artist: Everpage Designs

Book Description:

At the age of sixteen, August Goodson developed a strange and mysterious power overnight: he can find people. Victims of murder, suicide, kidnapping, accidents, and rape; August can find them all, usually dead, but sometimes still alive.

Nine years later finds August volunteering his services to the police. He's still smarting from the loss of his long-time love Dante, who cheated on him with his best friend, and harbors a deep crush on the incredibly handsome, and oh-so-straight, Detective Luke Williams. But there are bigger concerns on August's mind: a serial killer is loose in the city, one whose victims are a little too much like him for comfort.

When August finds a living victim who may be one of the serial killer's, he's drawn even deeper into the case. Will he make it out alive, or will he soon be the one in need of finding?

Excerpt:
Help me.
My eyes popped open to a pitch black room. For a few seconds, I lay where I was, sprawled on my back in my own bed. I wasn’t sure yet whether the voice I’d heard was real or whether I’d dreamed it. The room was unusually silent. My tiny studio apartment was normally filled with the sounds of the downtown street below. Not now, though, so I figured it must be late. Even the drunks had gone to sleep. Everything was still, quiet; I convinced myself I must have been dreaming. Just as I closed my eyes, I heard it again.
Help me.
Groaning, I rolled onto my side. With one hand, I groped for my cellphone on the end table, knocking something off in the process. Whatever it was, I didn’t hear it break, so I shrugged it off. I’d figure it out later. My hand landed on the phone. I picked it up, pushing the button to light up the screen; it was only three-thirty in the morning. I groaned again. I really didn’t want to get out of bed but it had to be done; the voice wouldn’t go away on its own. I could ignore it, but that had never worked out. I refused to go through that again.
Grumbling, I clambered out of bed and snatched the jeans I’d shucked off only a couple of hours before. Being sort-of psychic can be a real pain in the ass. I never know when a voice is going to call to me. It could be like now, in the middle of the night. It could be while I’m at work, which means I have to have a flexible job. Or it could be during the middle of sex, which makes relationships difficult, especially since I don’t like to tell people about what I can do.

Having a psychic ability is also weird. It doesn’t always work and I have no idea of the full extent of it. Sometimes I can do something useful, like avert a crime or a death. Most times I just find dead bodies. I know it’s a turn off. Most people, I figure, don’t want to get with a guy who’s basically a cadaver dog.

About the Author:

J.E. Lorin was born and raised in Michigan. After receiving a Bachelor’s degree in Germanic Studies from Indiana University, she lived in six different states before landing in the San Diego area, where she resides with her husband and their cat and dog. Her mission is to write interesting stories that just so happen to have a little sex in them.


@JELorinNovels





1 comments:

Unknown said...

Thanks for the feature!