The Story Behind My Stories by Vicki M. Taylor

I get my ideas for stories from a lot of different places. The newspapers. Television. Magazines. People watching. Dreams. My own weird imagination. I keep several four inch binders full of newspaper clippings, starts of stories, scraps of paper with notes on them, and other odds and ends that remind me of an idea for a book. I started keeping the binders way back when I first started writing full time in 1999. I’d had so many ideas for books I couldn’t keep them all in my head and I was worried that if I didn’t write them down, I’d forget them.

You see, I had a tendency to do things like that. Forget things. Call it old age, call it menopause, call it side effects to the various pills I take, but whatever it was, it wasn’t going to get me. So, all my notes and ideas went into those binders. And, let me tell you, I’m so glad I did. They’re a goldmine. Whenever I get stuck for an idea, I pull a binder off the shelf and flip through it. Loads of items separated by categories like police procedurals, murders, domestic violence, suicide.

Oh yeah, I write about some weird stuff straight out of real life. Take my novel Not Without Anna for example. It’s about drugs, alcohol, murder, and suicide all involving teenagers. Sound like something from the latest news report? Could have been. My daughter actually had the idea first. She wrote a short story for school and I borrowed the characters and wrote the book. It got great reviews, but it’s not a touchy-feely happily ever after story. Be prepared for the grittier side of life.

Now, I do have another book that has a really beautiful ending. It’s my latest book, Trust in the Wind. It’s definitely a romance. A look at the life of two tragic souls who find each other and fight the odds against them.

Trust in the Wind developed from a dream. A very vivid dream. When I woke the next morning, I could recall everything clearly in my mind. I knew I had something special. I instantly grabbed pen and paper (which I always keep next to my bed for just such occasions) and started writing. Furiously. I didn’t want to lose any of the story before I could get it all out of my head and onto the paper.

When I finished writing, I had the entire thing. The whole synopsis of the book. Even now, I can still recall parts of that dream clearly in my mind; it was that dramatic. The story is about a fiercely independent, young teenage mother who only wants to make a good life for her son, Joey, and herself. It tells what happens after she meets a county sheriff who makes a lasting impression on her young son and gets under her skin as well, no matter how hard she tries to fight it.

The sheriff has issues of his own; invisible demons that haunt him, and a job with a lot of risk. He too fights the attraction he feels for the small family he befriends, but can’t seem to help himself. He’s putty in little Joey’s hands. The drama increases ten-fold, when little Joey is kidnapped.

You can read more about Not Without Anna or Trust in the Wind by going to my website at http://www.vickimtaylor.com/books.html. You can click on the links to read an excerpt or read recent reviews.

Award winning author, Vicki M. Taylor writes dramatic stories with strong women as her main characters. Her novel, Not Without Anna won 2nd place in the 2003 Florida Writers’ Association’s Royal Palm Literary Awards and was published in January 2004. She won an honorary award for her short story, And Justice for All in the Fire to Fly contest from Futures Mysterious Anthology Magazine. Her manuscript Out for Justice was a finalist in the recent 2007 Golden Acorn contest.

A prolific writer of both novel length and short stories, she brings her characters to life in the real world. Her memberships include the National Association of Women Writers, Short Fiction Mystery Society, Romance Writers Association, and many more. She has had hundreds of articles published in electronic and print publications. She is one of the founders and past President of the Florida Writers Association, Inc. She speaks to local writing groups.

When she's not writing, you can find her lurking about the many writing boards and various forums while sitting at her computer in Tampa, Florida where she lives with her husband their dog, Jack and their parrot, Bailey. To find out more about Vicki and her writing, visit her website at http://www.vickimtaylor.com.