Good evening boys and girls, it's Storytime with your host, me; Hunter Cole. (That extended intro filled with commas and semi-colons ought to rile up the grammaphobes!)

That's right! After an extended absence, which could or could not be attributed to a judge-specified gag order, the fine ladies at RWU have chosen me to write this week's blog post. Imagine my surprise! Oh how I hope the tiara still fits.

This appointment did come with some caveats. For example, I'm not supposed to discuss [DELETED], or [DELETED], or that [DELETED] with those two woman. I do understand. I even understand the seventeen-page list of items I "shouldn't talk about in polite conversation" that mysteriously found itself into my e-mail the very morning I was scheduled to submit my post. Ahh, those who know me, know me well.

So I've decided it would only be fair to take this week and discuss the most unholy of holy metaphorical author questions in existence: Where do you get your ideas?

Let's begin with a story. It's a story not unlike one that your mother may have told you when you were a wee little lad, staying home from school because you faked a fever by rubbing hot water all over your face. This is the story of a struggling writer. Let's call him Stephen King.
No wait. That won't work. Let's call him Aaron Burr.

Aaron, our struggling writer, finds himself bent over his 1904 Remington typewriter every morning. Staring at the blank page. It stares back. In disgust. He throws his arms in the air[sic] dramatically, shouting "Why have you forsaken me? Why!" His voice, cracked and grumbly from days of not talking, echoes through the small heroin-injecting motel room, and out across the street, up and into the atmosphere, to disappear on its long journey into the oblivion of cold, icy space.

Just two miles away, on the good side of town, in a palatial mansion once owned by Hunter Cole, sits a different author. Let's call her, oh, I don't know... Diane Steele. Diane sits on the edge of her Louise XIV (or is it XVI?) bergere chair, sipping tea all pompous and stuff. "Oh Jeeves," she lavishly intones, "I believe I'm ready for my bon bons now." To which, she is served.

After going to the window to bestow her presence on her flock of adoring fans (and then blowing them off), she gets a phone call. It's her agent, telling her that she can't suffice on just million dollar mansions and jets and bon bons. She must continue to write. Write another book!

So Diane wanders into one of her seventy lushly appointed writing rooms, each with a different view of the city, but all getting the perfect amount of sunshine and breeze and none overlooking those yucky lower class people or unsightly houses or cars or restaurants. She sits down at the keyboard and the massive 82" Samsung screen for her supercomputer. And types.

The next morning, she calls her editor and says "Oh, I forgot to tell you, I finished that silly novel last night." They both laugh about it and setup an appointment to meet at the ladies tea room before taking a chartered jet to France for some afternoon shopping while they wait for the new book to be released at the top of the New York Times Bestsellers List.

While Diane and her editor are having tea, a straggly, scruffy, lunatic-looking Aaron is stomping by on his way to the beatnik hangout where he buys cigarettes. As he passes the tea room, he catches a glimpse of someone in his peripheral vision, just on the outside of the blurry part, and smashes his face against the window. Diane Steele! One of his favorite authors. Sitting right there, in front of him, separated only be the glass window and door lock that the hostess just latched!

Aaron bangs on the glass, shouting out whatever comes to his mind. "Diane!! I love you," he bellows, sounding like a caveman choking on a whole fish. "I have to know The Secret... like that self-help movie that seems mysterious but then really looks like it's just boring and pointless! Like Scientology!"

Diane stares in disbelief, trying to figure out how to use her cell phone to call the police, while her editor apologizes. "You just never know what crazies are going to show up!"

"Where do you get your ideas from, Diane? Please? Just answer that," Aaron belts through the glass, wondering if it would have been more proper to say 'just answer me that'. Does it need the me? Or is it more concise to say 'just answer that'?

Sensing a connection with Aaron, Diane stands and walks to the glass, placing her hand against his, only the window separating them. Only their past keeping them apart. She answers with a cursed line many authors use: "I don't know. They just pop into my head."

Immediately, Aaron realizes what Hunter Cole has compiled in these posts.

The First Law of the Muse: If the author you ask doesn't know where they get their ideas, or they just pop into their head, then the only way to GET those ideas into YOUR head is to track that author down and eat their brains.

This serves two purposes, actually. First, you become stronger and smarter by acquiring said authors brains. Not only will you have THEIR ideas just pop into your head now, but you'll also gain a great deal of grammatical and random, trivial knowledge. The second benefit, of course, is that you leave a wake of zombies in your path.

The moral of this story? Don't accept stupid answers from authors that hate you anyway. Listen to your friend, Hunter Cole, who really likes you and is someone you would hang out with and buy a lot of books from, and he will tell you how to develop ideas of your own. Don't count on others (especially not other authors) to tell you where to get your ideas. As you'll see in the Second Law of the Muse, you can take advantage of your own muse with much greater satisfaction.

-Hunter