Have you ever wondered how stories are created? Don’t look at me if you want an answer, I can only tell you how I do it. How every other author on the planet creates, is a question I am personally battling with. But how do I create stories? I would be lying if I said they all come to me in moments of utter genius. I reality, many of my novel length stories are adaptations of dreams I’ve had.

(At this stage, I would like to point out that yes, I have weird stuff going on in my head and no, you do not need to psycho-analyse me to figure that out.)

I have always had vivid and plot rich dreams. Possibly the reason I like to sleep so much is that it has always been fun! And at an early age, I started to play with dream-stories which I found implausible. If I didn’t like how a story was progressing, I would take it back to a key fork in the road and give the story a push in the ‘right’ direction. This is apparently, call lucid dreaming. It is as though you are partially conscious or aware during the dream and have a limited ability to effect change.

If I am not looking for a novel length story however, I tend to simply make random stuff up. It doesn’t have to be complex, just a story. This is why I like people sending me titles for short stories. It provides little breadcrumbs of inspiration that can lead me, well, anywhere! Most of the short stories on this site have started in that way; nothing more than a title.

So send me a title and I’ll see what I can make of it. Hopefully, it will be quite unexpected, but something you enjoy none the less.