E.A. Brady

What inspires you?

I’m someone for whom inspiration shows up unexpectedly. I never imagined myself as a writer. I love to read, and I feel deeply when I do so. But writing? That was for other people. You know, the ones who could write!

Until the day was in my car and I listened to ‘Alright for Now’ by Tom Petty for the millionth time and was struck by the underlying story behind it.

I always assumed the song was a man singing to his wife, but I suddenly had the story in my head that maybe it was a father singing to his child because he is all she has left in the world, and despite the circumstances that brought them together, they were going to be alright in the end.

It was wild. I began to wonder how she ended up with only him. What happened to her mother? Was she alive? Dead? How old was the child? In my imagination the daughter was quite young – maybe 5 or 6 years old.

For the longest time that story lived in my head all alone, but I kicked it around and tried out various scenarios where I could explain what was happening.

Then I watched a movie (Soulmate) on Netflix when I was home by myself one afternoon. Aside from enjoying the movie, I fell in love with the house where it was filmed. Suddenly my father and child duo had a home to live in and the rest of the details figured themselves out over the course of a couple years, entirely inside my head.

Three years later, that single dad is the hero, Seth Cooper, in the second book in my Oak Harbor series (working title: ‘Reclaim Me’).

How about you? Where do you find your inspiration?