Don't Look Back Out Today!

YEARS ago, I had a dream about Jack Bauer. Terrorists were coming and we needed Jack and he wanted no part of it. (Who could blame him?) In my dream, a kick-butt heroine kidnapped him and convinced him he was needed.

Then I woke up. And for a couple of years I tried to work that dream into a story. I don’t remember where I came up with the idea for Africa, except that it seemed dark and mysterious. Two movies provided me with my character backstories: Clive Owen’s Beyond Borders, about a doctor who ended up providing intelligence (among other things) to the CIA while working in dangerous parts of the world, and Bruce Willis’s Tears of the Sun, where an Army Ranger (I think) tries to rescue a village from warlords in Africa. I gave my heroine Clive’s backstory, with a lot more motivation, and Del has Bruce’s, with a less cheery ending.

Instead of Jack Bauer, I used Gerard Delaney, circa Reign of Fire, as the model for Del, and Evangeline Lilly (Kate from LOST) as the model for Liv.

This book took a long time to come together, and was inspired by many different things, but I’m very pleased with the final result.

If you write, where does your inspiration come from? If you’re a reader, do you like hearing about how inspiration strikes?

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