As a new writer, my ideas were all over the place. I got myself a book coach who listened to all my ideas and suggested that I put them under one roof, and the closest fit for that was Paranormal Cozy Mysteries. Also, I had some extraordinary experiences growing up that affected me. When I've tried to explain these experiences, people often don't believe me and walk away. My book coach told me that telling variations of these experiences in my writing will resonate with readers who have had similar experiences. They'll know and believe. For example, an older gentleman in my neighborhood heard that I wrote books. He invited me to his home and asked about my peculiar experiences. With tears in his eyes, he told me that his years in the Air Force exposed him to similar experiences. He was ordered never to discuss them, but he is grateful that he isn't alone in his experience.

Well, there are the reader's expectations in the genre that I have to meet. They are expecting the familiar to bring them into the story, and then I can weave in the unique parts into it. Sometimes I come across something that makes me wonder why that something is the way it is—for example, the story of Rip Van Winkle. There is the main story that we all probably heard since grade school, yet it also has a Postscript after the story that rarely gets shared. The story is about a demon who torments men and turns people into trees. There are details in the postscript that made my mind wander one day with the thought: What if the Rip Van Winkle story were true and his descendants still suffer with it today? What if that demon caused Rip Van Winkle to sleep? That became the basis for my second book.