Star Gazing Pie or Where Do You Get Your Ideas?

I think the question that every writer hears the most is: Where do you get your ideas? The answers are as varied as the writers who give the answers. For me the answer is every where in every thing. Case in point:

I like to go to WalMart and read the names of the colors on the paint chip samples… it’s weird, I know, but I get some great story ideas from them.

Another strange place where I get ideas is from cookbooks. in fact one thing that stands out in several of my books is Etiole`s  favorite food: Star Gazing Pie.

Probably the strangest thing to ever occur in my Twighlight Manor books, is The Star Gazing Pie that shows up in every story that used Etiole`.

There is a story behind this. I was in a dentists office in the 80’s and was reading the gourmet cooking magazines that were in his office (why a dentist had gourmet cooking magazines in his waiting room I do not know). One of the magazines was a large almost book-like French magazine (we live in a French community, so books and magazines imported from France are not an unusal thing to see around here— and how I come to collect Picsou Geant comic books). The magazine was filled with these great French dishes that look impossible to make and must be heaven to eat, and than I saw the most bizarre thing I had ever seen in my entire life: a recipe for Star Gazing Pie. It’s enough to make you sick, and not a recipe I would ever have expeced to see, just the perfect thing for a family of vampire-like creatures living in a haunted house.

Star Gazing Pie is sea-food that is literaly see-food. A fish pie that is decorated with nothing less than the eyes of the fish that was baked inside. There they were, staring up at the stars, eyes carefully placed ontop of the freshly baked pie…  REAL EYES all glassy and looking like something straight off Tales From The Crypt.

At first I was horrified, but than I was intreeged and after reading the article about the resturant in France that served this strange dish, I knew right than and there that it was perfect for my French male siren Etiole`. Since that day, never a story can be written about Etiole, that does not at some point feature mention of Star Gazing Pie.

 So you see, ideas came come to you in the strangest of places and when you least expect them, al you have to do is keep your eyes toward the star and have an open mind.

~~EK

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