The concept typically comes first. Those are the lightbulb moments, the most muse-y ones. For my first book, it was the idea of this uneasy trio involved in dream research, a romantic couple and their professor. For my second book, I knew that four siblings would visit a fortune teller, who tells them their dates of death (or so she claims), and that the book would then follow the siblings over the course of their lives. And for this new book, there were two threads—one was a fascinating (real!) science experiment that was producing results with eerie implications. And the second thread was my desire to explore the universe of marriage, or partnership.
Recorded Denise S. Robbins, The Creative Independent interview source ↗