Hello awesome readers. Today I have a great guest post for you on my stop of the tour for:
Threadwalkers
by Joanna Volavka
Publication date: October 16th 2017
Genres: Science Fiction, Young Adult
After her father’s death in a plane crash, Miranda Woodward’s life begins to unravel. On her sixteenth birthday, Miranda receives a mysterious gift: a small wooden box containing a needle and spool of gossamer golden thread, left behind by her father, which begins a chain of events that soon leave her life in chaos. Her pet cat is replaced with another, her teachers don’t have her on their roll call at school, even her closest friends forget who she is. When her mother vanishes into thin air, Miranda becomes desperate for answers. She follows clues to a meet a man known only as the Tailor. With his help, she must find a way to fix her life before it’s too late.
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*Guest Post*
3 Inspiring Sources for Novel Ideas
One of the things I get asked frequently is what inspired a particular story. This can be hard to answer, as I really think that everything we write draws from a deep well of life experience, but there are also specific sources that I find myself tapping over and over again. Sometimes they are story-specific, but many of them are simply consistent resources to draw upon. Here are three of them.
- Family Stories
Family lore is rich with interesting details (and plenty of legends) that can inform or enrich a story you want to tell. Everything from the particular way your grandmother’s kitchen smelled to the wild story about great-great-uncle John shooting a pair of rattlesnakes in the middle of the night with his shotgun (YEP, that’s a real family legend in my house!) can provide rich detail for your worldbuilding. It could even spark an entire narrative that you’ve got to follow to the end. You don’t have to make your story autobiographical by any means, nor should every story BE that way. But great-great-uncle John might make for a fantastic secondary character to add depth to your writing.
- What I’m Currently Into
This may sound obvious, but often the things I’m currently geeking out over can have a heavy influence on what stories I want to tell. My book, Threadwalkers, came from a thought experiment I had with myself after watching a tv show about looking for “ghosts” using “scientific methods.” (I put those in quotations because I’m not sure that what these people were actually looking for were ghosts, nor were the methods scientific. But you follow what I mean.) I love these kinds of “looking for monster” shows, and the people who document their experiences are fascinating. At any rate, I began wondering what a scientific explanations of ghost sightings would look like, thought about theories of spacetime, and came up with the concept of thin spots, or snags, in the fabric of spacetime, where one could see through to the same place at another point in time. That would mean that so-called “ghosts” were actually just real people, at another point in the time stream. The story grew from there.
- Current Events
They say that the truth is stranger than fiction, and wow is that the truth. Open any news feed and you’ll find stories that run the gamut from weird to heartwarming to terrifying. All of these are sources for story ideas. I don’t mean to go and write up a fictional version of the news story you just read, but current events can feed your mind, and enrich it with stories about humanity or the state of the world. Does a particular issue speak to you? Read some more about it, pursue it, and you might just find the first thread of a story that you’re passionate to tell.
Author Bio:
Joanna Volavka is the author of the young adult science fiction novel Threadwalkers. She currently lives in Chicago with her husband, two cats, and extensive book collection. A writer for Geek Girl Pen Pals, Joanna spends her time alternately between creative artistic pursuits and has a passion for conservation and wildlife while working on whatever story she’s got brewing in her overly active imagination. She still hasn’t decided what she’s going to be when she grows up, though she suspects it will probably be herself. Read more about Joanna and her adventures on her website http://www.joannavolavka.com
You can connect with Joanna on Twitter: @joannavolavka and on Instagram: @joannavolavka and @geekyjo
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Thanks for being on the tour! 🙂
Thank you for hosting the tour! This is such an interesting book. I love the premise!