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GIVEAWAY: (5) eBook copies of WHISPERS OF THE PAST. For a chance to win, simply leave a comment on the  authors’ tour page as well as any other tour stop.

 Inspiration can come from places where you least expect it, but writers often have places where they go or rituals that they do with the expectation that inspiration will come. Some writers must have a quiet place to allow their creative juices to flow, while others have certain music that they listen to when they want to be inspired. For me, going out into the wilderness and pondering the wonders of nature allows me to clear my mind and seems to invite creative thoughts and ideas.
“The Woman in the Water” came to me on just such an occasion. I was spending some time at a nearby lake that I visit often. Normally, I approach the lake from the creek below and hike up to it, over and around the massive boulders that border each side of the dam that contains it. On this particular day, the water was very high, spilling down over the top of the dam and down into the creek in gushes and torrents, making the foot path below impassable, so a came in from above and found a nice boulder about three quarters of the way to sit and meditate on.
I wasn’t searching for inspiration, but while I sat there watching the waters spill over the top of the dam, a story began to form in my mind. I knew the wall supporting the dam lay behind the water flooding over was there, yet it was all but invisible behind the gushing water, as if it didn’t exist at all. It was easy to imagine that there could be a whole other world hidden by the curtain the water provided. I soon found myself pulling out my spiral notebook that I used to carry everywhere, and jotting down the thoughts in my head, so the story wouldn’t be lost.
When I returned to my computer, typed the whole thing out and “The Woman in the Water” was born. It may have taken an afternoon to develop, but it only took about an hour to get it down on the page. The story revolves around a woman who passes through the curtain of water and disappears as a man perched on a boulder above, as I had been that day, watches. Unable to stop thinking about what he’d seen, he returns at a later date, when the water is lower, to search for evidence that what he saw was real. I won’t tell you what his conclusion is. I’ll let you decide for yourselves.