When I was young I wanted to be a horse. Since I couldn't be a horse, I read books about horses. My sister eventually persuaded me to read something other than horse stories, and introduced me to Andre Norton. Of course, I was soon reading everything I could get my hands on.

However, in my mind, authors were like rock-stars. It never occured to me that it was something a regular person could choose to do. Then, when I went to college I discovered that my roommate was a writer. She had dozens of spiral-bound notebooks filled with hand-written stories. She proved that an normal person could choose to write a story. That realization was, eventually, life-changing.

When my husband took a job in Chicago I was frequently left alone with a hyperactive toddler in a tiny apartment. When he finally took a nap, I needed something to occupy my time (besides housekeeping, of course. Housekeeping has never been on my top-ten list). I chose to spend the time writing down a story, which gradually grew until became a book.

When the story was finished, I was tempted to simply slide it into a drawer and forget about it. My husband urged me send it to some publishers. That story,Masques, became my first published novel.

Stories imitate life, and there's no substitute for having a little mileage on the odometer when plotting stories. I've also yet to find a fast, easy and reliable method to produce a great (or even workable) story idea.

For me, it's a messy and sometimes lengthy process. I start with a very vague, nebulous idea of the type of story I want to tell. For example: "traditional medieval fantasy". Of course there will be castles and sword fights, and deeds of bravery, but that's a long way from a story.

With the foggy idea in place, I start trying out various details. Some details take shape earlier than others. For me, it's usually the characters who first coalesce into something a bit more firm. It's important to note that, at this stage, nothing is set in stone. I may imagine a character, give him or her some shape and dimension and the beginnings of personality, and decide that I don't like the way this character changes my imaginary world. For example, maybe I was imagining a cocky, swashbuckling Errol Flynn sort of character, with doublet and rapier, but I've been imagining a setting more like twelfth century England. They obviously don't go together, so I have to decide whether to change the setting or the character. It can be a long process, and there's a lot of mental tweaking and adjusting.

Eventually, I'll arrive with the basis of a story: a character in a place with a problem. My efforts are focused on insuring that the character is charismatic, that he fits in that place, and that his problem is sufficiently interesting to carry a novel. When those three elements are finally right, it's time to pick up the keyboard and begin actually telling the story.

I don't plot (much) in advance. I'm a seat-of-the-pants writer (also called a pantzer) so the rest of the ideas come to me gradually as I write the story.

I currently write full time, but it's not quite as simple as that.

For many years I had a day job. All sorts of day jobs, in fact. I've worked as a convenience-store clerk, insurance-office gopher, substitute teacher, museum assistant and a half-dozen more. Some of these jobs were full time, and some were part time. I usually worked during the day, and then wrote at night after everyone was asleep.

Our finances gradually improved, and writing time grew to fill the available hours. Finally the day came when I was able to quit my day job and dedicate my time entirely to writing. I can remember doing some simple calculations along the lines of, "If I'm currently working three hours a day, and writing one book a year, then I should easily be able to do two books a year, probably three!" Multiplying the earnings of my current books by three painted a nice enough financial picture to quit my day job.

I soon discovered that, while I had far more hours, my creativity hadn't magically multiplied. I have maybe four hours a day of good creative output, and then it's time to do something else. Fortunately, there's always more to do. There's editing, marketing, and social media. There's foreign editions, research and networking. And, just in case I'm bored, there's always something to do on the horse farm!

Because I only have a certain amount of creativity, my writing tends to follow a predictable pattern. In the early phases of writing I spend a great deal of time just exploring all of the possible story threads by following multi-branched decision trees. If the characters do this, that will happen, then they will do this, then they all die. Back up and try again. I'm not plotting all the way to the end of the book, usually just the next couple of chapters. However, beginnings are full of infinite possibilities, and I'm still trying to decide which paths to follow and what "shape" this story will take.

This early phase has a lot of creative, mental work, which probably looks like daydreaming to anyone on the outside. In fact, that woozy half-awake state in early morning is perfect for this sort of work. However, the pages come very slowly, and after a few hours my brain is tired.

As the book progresses, the number of potential plots gradually diminishes, which means there's less thinking and more writing. Pages come progressively more rapidly, and I can work longer hours on writing. By the end of the book, I'm usually pushing a deadline, but with the plot firmly decided I can work fourteen or sixteen hour days, occasionally writing twenty or thirty pages in a day.

Even writing full time, it's not a steady 8-hours Monday through Friday sort of job. It just doesn't work that way.

In a purely rational world, I suppose one would look at the publishing landscape and decide what to write based on market expectations. I'm sure there's a spreadsheet somewhere that calculates mean earning by genre, and cross-references the likelihood of earning prestigious awards with literary theme. It might well show that stories featuring critically-ill young women dying with dignity have a high-probability of garnering critical acclaim and that dystopian-world romances are most likely to earn financial rewards.

However, at least for me, it takes anywhere from six months to a year to produce a decent book. A year of my life, in which my most productive time is spent thinking about that story. I don't want to put that kind of effort into a story I'm not interested in, and I'm convinced that if I tried to "hold my nose" and write something I didn't care about, it would show in the finished product.

It's been said that most authors write the book they wanted to read, but couldn't find. I honestly like fantasy, including urban fantasy. It's a flexible genre. I can tell a swashbuckling adventure story, a steamy romance, or a hard-boiled detective story. If I wrap it with a sprinkling of magic and a dash of the fantastic, I'm good. What other genre offers such flexibility?

I write what I love because life is too short to waste on things you aren't passionate about.

Writing is a career that will test the social mettle of just about anyone. On one hand, an author needs to be supremely comfortable with their own company. Writing a novel requires many hours (for me, probably a thousand or more) of sitting alone staring at a computer screen, listening to the voices in your head. That's enough to drive some people crazy.

Conversely, promotion requires the author to fly around the country attending conventions and signings. You'll meet thousands of people, shake hands, take selfies, tell jokes and just hang out. You may also be writing numerous emails, blog posts, podcasts or whatever. This is a job for a dedicated socialite; a professional schmoozer.

Somehow, an author has to be both a dedicated introvert and a flamboyant socialite. I'm very shy by nature, but over the years I've learned to adapt pretty well to socially-demanding situations. I enjoy meeting people and chatting with them. I'm genuinely interested in other people. And, at the end of a half-day of being intensely social, I am more than happy to go lock the door on my hotel room and decompress for a few hours. I'm neither as shy as I used to be, nor outgoing enough to be truly comfortable with big signings and conventions. This career has changed me, and I've got a foot in both worlds.

Good writing always requires research. In writing, the author's job is to create a convincing illusion of a complete, believable world. You can't build a believable world with foggy references and vague arm waving, you're going to need details. They say the devil is in the details, and it certainly seems that way.

If your medieval hero pulls on a linen shirt, you have some questions to answer. Does your hero live in a land where flax would grow? It's a moderately finicky plant, so that puts some real limits on the local ecology and climate. If not, who are they trading with? Where are the facilities for processing and weaving the fabric? It's not something done by the average housewife. That linen shirt just raised a dozen questions in the minds of every reader who knows their textiles, and their trust in you depends on getting the details right.

Guns are my personal nemesis. For some reason gun-related information slips out of my brain like it was teflon-coated. However, a very large percentage of urban fantasy readers are gun literate. If I have a character with a Desert Eagle (Hollywood's favorite hand-cannon) concealed under their little black cocktail dress, brows will furrow in consternation. Not all handguns have safeties, decockers, or external hammers, and magazine capacities matter. I try to be extra-careful, but a couple of errors have stilled slipped through.

There's a million little details in any world, and if you get them wrong the readers will notice. They'll gradually stop trusting you. If they can't trust you with guns or agriculture, why would they believe you when you talk about dragons or werewolves? A reader's trust is fragile, and research is how you earn it.

Once again, there's no magic involved. I think a lot of aspiring authors are convinced that there is some secret recipe of background music, scented candles and keyboard layout that will make writing easy. If there is such a recipe, please let me know!

With that said, it's easier to be creative when you're physically comfortable. Having a dedicated writing space, even if it's just a desk that's yours makes a tremendous difference. I keep my office a bit warmer than my house, because I'll be sitting still for hours. Background music, scented candles, whatever makes you relaxed is fine. Just remember you're setting up a work area not a seduction scene; scattering rose petals around the workplace might be taking it too far.

Once you're comfy, it's time to work. As I mentioned, I usually start a story with an idea for a character, a setting, and a problem. I refine these details as I write them, so I spend a lot of time thinking with a half-finished sentence on the screen. Each decision you make early on is going to shape the whole story, so think it through carefully. Then you just keep going to the end.

I've often compared it to weaving. As I work, I'm weaving setting, character, plot and a thousand little details into a tapestry. The part already woven determines which threads are loose, which elements are in-play, and whatever I'm writing has to mesh smoothly. Unlike an actual weaver, I can go back and selectively re-work elements of the tapestry to my liking. In fact, when good ideas strike late in the creative process, I often talk about going back to "weave" them into the story so things don't suddenly show up out of the blue in chapter ten.

I've detailed more of my thoughts and writing process in Building a Strong Story: 7 Critical Elements.

I'm a voracious reader, and I'm relatively genre-agnostic. I mention this because I think everything an author experiences influences their thoughts, which ultimately influences their writing. In that sense, there are hundreds or thousands of authors who have influenced my own writing. In my early works, I can often read a passage and tell you exactly what I was reading when I penned that passage, which is sort of embarrassing. Hopefully I've gotten better about writing in my own voice.

With that said, there are some authors who stand out:

• Andre Norton was my gateway drug and opened worlds of wonder and delight for me. She told huge stories with very few words.
• Anne McCaffrey who taught me to fly with dragons and the wonder of being a starship, instead of just piloting it.
• Dick Francis is famous for his horse-racing mysteries (which I love). But what I learned from him was how to write conversation that pushes the story forward.
• John Steinbeck who, like Andre Norton, used very simple sentences and words to tell stories that were anything but simplistic. I can't manage the power of his prose, but I use him to remind myself that complex is not necessarily more important.
• Lois McMaster Bujold makes heroes out of unusual people. She reminded me that heroes are the people who just get the job done as best they can.

In a general sense, part of being an author is looking at the people around you and asking, "Why do they do this? What motivates them?" That said, basing a character entirely on someone you know--or worse, on yourself--is usually a mistake.

If you've based a character on one of your friends or on yourself, you've set some artificial bounds on that character. There is truth to the saying that authors torture their characters: pain, betrayal and desperation are common in books. The person who can vicariously torture their friends, or themselves this way may need counseling. Also, characters need to have flaws, and it's always easy to see the flaws in our friends. If you write those into a story, you may lose a friend or two.

Of the (probably) thousands of characters I've written, four have been deliberately based on people I know. Zee, my fae mechanic, is loosely based on a dear friend, our own VW mechanic, who was dying from cancer as I began the first Mercy book. He was a wonderful human being, a real character, and I found that he was the perfect mentor for my little coyote. Buck died before the book was in print, but he was delighted to play his role. Friends, not understanding just intimate a good character portrait is, sometimes asked to be put into books. I usually resist, but I had a friend who was an antiquarian bookseller who told me that Mercy needed to do some research in the store he helped to run. A couple of books later, I discovered he was right. It was supposed to be a walk on part--so I didn't see the harm in it. Then a couple of books later, I thought the story was going to require me to kill him...er, his character. I called him and told him that I might have to kill him--and he was okay with it. Finally, early on in my career, I had two characters (in different books) very loosely based on one of my husband's co-workers. I just picked a couple of traits that time, not the whole person, but usually I don't know where I get the bits of character I shove in a paper bag and shake together. But using real people to make your characters is full of possible disasters. I don't recommend it.

It depends on the book. Sometimes I have a hard time getting a character's voice firmly in my head. If I don't know who they are, what they want, and what they feel like I can't write them convincingly. I struggle every book with Anna (from Alpha and Omega). She's very unlike me. She's so quiet and soft-spoken that it takes me a while before I remember she's got a core of spring-steel and rawhide and if she gives ground, it's only to gain a tactically-superior position.

Sometimes the middle doldrums seem insurmountable. Since I don't write from an outline, I'm sort of navigating by feel, and when things don't work I often have to backtrack, delete pages (or chapters) and explore a new route. I'm gradually getting better at finding my way through them. The problem is that when it's not going well, when I'm adrift without a sense of direction, it becomes far too easy to procrastinate, or find something else to do. Discipline is hard.

Occasionally, the sheer weight of world-building becomes crushing, especially on a long series. How many characters have walked on-stage in the Mercy-Verse? Literally dozens of them are important enough to have their own story arcs and timelines. For example, even though Tony the cop may only show up every two or three books, his life isn't frozen. I can't just polish up an imaginary Tony figurine and put it in a drawer for later. Somewhere, in the back of my mind, his character arc is playing out as well, so when he shows up again in a book or two he'll be a slightly different person, changed by the events that didn't make it into print. Do that for thirty or forty characters, while trying to keep track of everything you've said in previous books, and it can become exhausting. I haven't found a cure yet.

I can actually shed some light on this one. It's something most beginning writers struggle with, and it can be disconcerting.

The human brain is a terrible computer in most respects. Our memories are unreliable, our perceptions are easily deceived, and even the best of us can't do math as well as a cheap calculator. We are, however, remarkably good at pattern recognition, and that turns out to be critical when dealing with characters.

I've talked a little bit about creating a character, and the amount of thought and craft that goes into that. You almost certainly know more about your protagonist than you do about most of your friends. Your mind is going to use that to play tricks on you. Here's how it happens:

There comes a point when your plan calls for a character to do something, but when you sit down to write the scene the character flaty refuses. You issue orders, and he gets grossly insubordinate. You know this character is a figment of your imagination. Now you can almost hear his impudent voice explaining that he's not going to follow your stupid outline, he's got plans of his own.

Before you check yourself into the nearest psychiatrist, think about what's happening. You invented a character, complete with goals, motivations and personality. Your brain is treating your character like a real person—that is what you wanted, right? Being able to predict how other people are going to react (especially when they're not acting rationally) has been a survival trait ever since the first hominids formed social groups. Your brain is really, really good at this sort of predictive analysis, and it's telling you that this particular person, in this particular situation, isn't acting right. Your brain isn't malfunctioning, it' simply trying to warn you. So there you sit, arguing with an imaginary person.

After the first few times this happens, you sort of get used to it. The character's motivation is wrong. Change the character or change the story until the character shrugs and says, "OK Boss, I'm on it!" and goes back to doing what you've asked him to do. Then take a moment to say, "Thank you, brain, for helping me make my character act rationally, my readers will greatly appreciate it."

Do you remember, in Greek mythology, the story of Pandora? Pandora was the first woman on Earth. She opened a jar from which flew all manner of evils: disease, pestilence and death entered the world, never to be eradicated. However, when poor Pandora examined the jar she discovered that it held one more thing: Hope.

Like most authors, I hope that my stories are entertaining. My writing sometimes goes to some dark places, and bad things happen. My worlds are not all fluffy bunnies and prancing unicorns. In the end, though, when the reader has turned the last page, I want the reader, like Pandora, to discover a bit of hope. The darkness cannot hold back the light forever. I would like them to leave my world feeling a little bit better than when they entered. That is the true magic of storytelling.

Read. Read the great books, the classics, to understand the history and power of the craft. Read good books, and then ask yourself what made them good. Read bad books, and learn from them as well. Know your chosen genre well enough to navigate its tropes with confidence. Know other genres so that you can borrow from them, and enrich your writing. Read until the cadence of story and plot are part of you, and you will never fear to steer your story into deep waters, for the path is written in your heart! (OK, that was cheesy. We just watched Moana, and I couldn't resist. Sorry.)

Oh, and don't be afraid to make mistakes. This is an art, not a science. It's messy, and mistakes are part of the fun.