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Or, rather, I wish my day had thirty-nine hours. That would, frankly, make life easier. 

Then again, time does seem to expand to fill a vacuum, so maybe it wouldn't be easier, just longer. I'm not sure. All I know is that there never seems to be enough time (I wonder if that could be because so many people sit around killing time? I mean, come on! If you've got too much time on your hands, don't kill it or waste it, send it my way. After all, time flies, right? Somebody, help my now. I'm getting lost in my own puns....)

Ahem.

Anyway, the point is that for a writer, time is something to be cherished and protected, which is why I've installed a lock on my office door. Because even though fifteen minutes with a break and then another fifteen minutes adds up to thirty minutes, the quality of the interrupted thirty isn't the same as one solid block of luxurious writing time. Which means that, yes, mommy does get frustrated when the head pops in during my writing time. (Thus the lock.) And I end up doing whatever it takes to get in my Big Blocks of Unfettered Writing Time. 

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Back when I sold my first book in 1999, nobody, but nobody, was buying paranormals. Publishers, that is. I had a fairy tale-esque paranormal that was doing well in contests, but all the comments came back saying "you will never sell this."

Well, thank goodness, it did sell (The Cat's Fancy) and over the next couple of years, paranormal grew and grew and grew, and considering the state of the paranormal romance and urban fantasy markets, it's not slowing down anytime soon. To which I say "yay!" because I love paranormal in all shapes and forms.

And the truth of the matter is that paranormal should be popular. After all, to my way of thinking, paranormal is the heart of genre fiction, if not all of fiction. Heck, of writing itself.

That's a lot of responsibility to shoulder, but I'm standing by my theory. I mean, think about it. Fiction is the creation of a world out of thin air--that's easy-squeazy for a paranormal author.

Building people. Putting characters together bit by bit, just like Frankenstein. That's paranormal.

No matter what the story, there's a little bit of magic in every book you pick up. And we should never forget how special that is. Authors dabble in magic, and instead of pulling a rabbit out of the hat, we pulled a novel.

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I've been doing a lot of interviews lately, and a common question is: Where do you get your ideas? Usually, I fall back on my old standby (Walmart, aisle 13), but the fact is that it's a legitimate question. It's also one that's hard to answer, not only because the question is usually asked of in the sense of the "royal you," as in "where do all authors in general get their ideas?" Like maybe there's an Idea Mart over behind the Dairy Queen. But all authors are different, so I can't speak for the entire species.

Worse, I can't even really speak for myself, because each book is completely different. Some I remember in detail, and some I remember a kernel, and some I don't have the foggiest idea.

Right now, my book Tainted is on shelves (yay! hooray! release the balloons!). It's the first book of three, which are being released back-to-back, and this is one of the amorphous ones, because the story stems so much from the character, who I really got to know while writing and revising. Alas, I can't go into too much detail without revealing spoilers, but basically: I had the germ of a character (an assassin who hunts demons) and the germ of a plot (there are bad guys doing bad things and she needs to stop them). But when you get right down to it, that's pretty generic. And the story itself isn't really generic at all. Why? Well, for one, the story twists and turns all over the place. For another, the heroine really is the story, and Lily is pretty unique (and, thankfully, the reviews so far are backing me up on this, which is always a nice feeling for an author!). All of which is my rambling way of saying that the "story idea" of Tainted wasn't a Slam Bam moment, but a slow build of working out character and story in tandem.

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Julie Kenner is our guest blogger during the week of November 9th. If you have any questions for Julie Kenner, add a comment to any of her posts.

Here is more information on Tainted:

Lily Carlyle has lied, cheated, and stolen her way through life.

But in death, she'll really get to be bad...

When her little sister is brutalized, a vengeful Lily determines to exact her own justice. She succeeds at the cost of her own life, but as she lies dying, she is given a second chance. Lily can earn her way into Paradise by becoming an assassin for the forces of good.

It's the job Lily believes she can really get into-but she doesn't realize that she may not be able to get out.

View our feature on Julie Kenner's Tainted.