We all have our first spark.
Maybe it was a cousin who ran a chaotic homebrew game over Thanksgiving break.
Maybe it was reading The Hobbit, watching Legend, or seeing Conan stride across a barren world full of swords, serpents, and sorcery.
For me? My inspiration came from fog-shrouded cemeteries, books on mythology, and finding a copy of the Monster Manual during silent reading time.
Dark Shadows.
Hammer Horror.
Witch trial folklore and tales from Medieval Europe.
Those were my touchstones. That’s the marrow in the bones of the witch books I write, the characters I create, and the adventures I run. I wasn’t drawn to mighty warriors and golden thrones; I was drawn to the outsider. The whisperer. The one who knows too much and says too little.
These are the things that inspire me.
I wanted characters who were feared for what they might be, not for what they’d done. I wanted villages that held secrets under every root and hearthstone. I wanted magic that felt old, like it was carved into the world before the gods ever got around to naming it.
That’s the kind of inspiration that sticks. That coils around your imagination and never lets go. It shapes your choices as a writer, a referee, a player, even when you don’t realize it.
And inspiration doesn’t have to be high fantasy or heroic.
Sometimes it’s a whisper.
A shape in the mist.
A name scratched into the cellar wall.
And once you find it, once you feel it, you build from there.
Because here’s the real truth:
You never know what part of your world, your blog, your spell list, or your strange little NPC is going to light a fire in someone else.
Inspiration moves in a circle.
We draw from the stories that came before, and then we send our own sparks out into the dark.
And if we’re lucky?
Someone else picks them up.
When. Grateful. Accessory.
When was I grateful for an accessory? Or something.
Honestly, i think it might have been when I got my first PDA, a Handspring Visor. These were Palm Pilot clones created by some of the guys who had founded Palm when it was U.S. Robotics. Having something I could keep in my pocket and jot down notes whenever I wanted and then collect them all later on was amazing.
I have gone through many of these things over the years. Upgrading to smartphones and more, but that little blue Visor holds a special place in my heart.
I pretty much wrote my first Netbook of Witches and Warlocks, as well as Ghosts of Albion, on that thing.
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