It’s the question I probably hear most often, especially because I usually have at least 6+ novels out every year.

Where do you get your ideas from?

How do authors like you think of so many ideas?

What do you do to get new ideas?

And so I sat down at my desk to write a blog about it. And discovered that…I don’t really know 😅

That sounds so flippant, but honestly, I have never struggled to think of ideas. In fact, the opposite is true. I have ideas for over ten more series sitting on my computer, just waiting for me to have the time to write them!

But when I thought more about it, I tried to narrow down specifically how those ideas come to me, and I think it happens in one of two ways.

Firstly, I think of a series idea. For example, my Twelve Days of Christmas series came about when I was listening to the Christmas carol and suddenly thought, “What if there were twelve cousins, and their love stories followed the lyrics of the song?” A couple of years later, and the series was launched!

Sometimes this series idea is more thematic. For example, I was reading a lot of ‘governess’ themed Regency books, and I suddenly thought: “What if there was a bureau, or a company or something, that organised governesses…and it kept going wrong?” The Governess Bureau series was born!

And the second way that I think of ideas is when a character walks into my head, and I realise I have to tell their story. They usually become one of the romantic leads in the first book in the series, and they introduce me to all their friends who then demand their own series.

This happened with Richard, Duke of Axwick who became the hero in Always the Bridesmaid, book 1 of my ‘Never the Bride‘ series, and with Julia who is the heroine in Don’t Judge a Duke by His Cover, book 1 in my ‘Dukes in Danger‘ series.

So that’s how I come by my ideas! There’s no magic, and no real cleverness. They kind of happen to me. One day I suppose I might run out of ideas, but it hasn’t happened in a decade so far…