Ideas are all over, many of them just lying around and easy to pick up. But an idea is just the beginning of a story—the premise. Good ideas lead to other ideas as a writer goes along, taking brick after brick and building a house.
When I wrote the first Laura Cardinal novel, DARKNESS ON THE EDGE OF TOWN, I had a killer who preyed on young girls. Which, of course, is nothing new. But that, alone, wasn’t enough. As I went along, more ideas came to me. The bad guy was bad, yes. But he wasn’t bad enough. So partway through the book, I came up with a much worse guy, to be revealed later, and that guy was so evil it made my scalp prickle. His name online was “Dark Moondancer.”
How did I come up with the name “Dark Moondancer?” The name came from a very good racehorse.
Racehorse names are plentiful and must be unique (as I discovered when I wrote the racing suspense novel, DARK HORSE.) There simply cannot be two horses with the same name. And since there are only so many names people can come up with, the owners have to go farther and farther afield. Which leads to some genuinely funny names.
Like Hoofhearted.
Say that three times really fast and you’ll see why the name always got a reaction at the racetrack.
Wishing you all a very happy and productive New Year!
