Hubby often asks me what inspired my latest story. Inspiration can be a funny thing, and can be drawn from almost anything. I’m never far from a pen and paper, just in case it strikes.
I’d started the day checking out the weather, reading some of the news online, and noticed an article that was talking about a person’s moral compass. I only read a little of the article and decided to check my email. As I deleted a bunch of spam, I couldn’t help but be distracted. Inspiration had struck. I just needed to figure out what it was.
The words moral compass kept replaying in my mind. I do like a play on words title. Some of mine include Bawdy Talk, The Howl and the Pussycat, Witching Well, and Breaking in Levi. By changing the word moral into mortal, the title of my book was clear: Mortal Compass.
Once I have my title, I’m good to go and like to type out a few lines of what I’d like the book to be about. It’s not quite a synopsis or even a blurb, just some jumbled thoughts I get out before they’re forgotten.
The word mortal immediately made me think of vampires and I knew it would be a vampire story. I then took the idea of a compass and thought of a woman – the mortal – drawing the attention of a vampire, or vampires. But she needed something that would interest them. A reason to come after her. So I thought of an object that would mean something to one party and be of interest to an innocent bystander. A gem came to mind and the moonstone is very dear to my heart. Hubby and I had a long distance relationship in the beginning. When I flew over to be with him for a couple weeks, he took me to a jewelry store and bought me a moonstone for safe travels for when I went back.
Moonstones represent many different themes: a sacred love, good luck, and protection for a traveler. It is also known as an energizer – to ward off fatigue and weakness. Taking those elements, I knew they’d all need to tie into the story in one way or another. So my woman character was travelling to find a place where she could recharge her batteries. I decided to make her a healer.
Once she found the moonstone she would crave the energy flowing through her to the point she didn’t want to ever let it go. And when she did, it would make her weak all over again. So she would find the stone that is sacred to a vampire clan. They of course would want it. But there was something missing. An alpha vampire who would also be the hero.
Hot sweaty, lusty sex would have to be thrown in there, and the end result – eternal love.
And add in the Amazon rainforest in South America and I got right to work.
For the rest – you’ll have to read the story. 
~Ann Cory
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