Aaron Paul Lazar – What Scares You? (Or where do writers get their ideas?) @aplazar #TheSeacrest

As an author I’m often asked, “Where do you get your ideas?”

It’s one of my favorite subjects, so if you decide to ask me on our next exchange, pull out a chair and settle in. It’s hard for me to stop talking about it once I start.

In previous articles, I’ve mentioned how life in general (news, friends, movies, etc.) can inspire story lines. Today I’d like to discuss how my fears drive my plots.

Allow me to open up right from the beginning and tell you what scares the hell out of me.

1) Losing my wife, daughters, grandkids, or other family members (including pets)

2) Being caught in a fire (hey, I didn’t say my fears were original, did I?)

3) Drowning

4) Heights

5) Bad guys

6) Plane crashes (if I’m inside)

7) Tornadoes

8) Floods (and a subsequent drowning)

9) Snakes. (shudder)

10) Being in a bad accident in a massive snow storm

11) Falling under the ice and not being able to get out

12) Geez! Isn’t 11 enough?

As I analyze this long list of fears, I realize I’ve used those themes over and over again in my twenty-one books. Those twists on all the themes have given my characters fits on a number of occasions. In Double Forte’, Gus nearly drowns, his daughter is threatened, his grandson disappears, and he goes off the road with said grandson in the vehicle in a bad snowstorm. Uh huh. Looks at all those fears!

In Upstaged, Gus has to deal with a big snake, he’s terrorized by a psychotic maniac, and his fiancee’s beloved dog is kidnapped.

Mazurka opens with a near plane crash, Gus and Camille are hunted by Nazis, abandoned unground in the Parisian Catacombs, almost drowned when their car plunges into an alpine lake, and are imprisoned during a fierce fire. Oh yeah, Mazurka hit a lot of them.

In Tremolo: cry of the loon, we do the handcuffed-to-a-bed-in-a-roaring-fire bit, the being-attacked-underwater-and-almost-drowning-bit, and also have Gus misunderstand and think his mother died. Phew. That was a bad one, too.

So I won’t go through Firesong, which includes many of the above as well, but believe me, fears are intertwined in all the books. And facing those fears by writing about them is good therapy. It’s also a good way to get your readers’ hearts pumping, for you can be assured that many of your fears are shared by them.

And now that I’ve written my first love story, The Seacrest, I realize that I’ve utilized many examples from the first two on the list above – Finn loses his mother, father, grandfather, sister ten years before the story opens, and then he has another huge loss in chapter 1, which starts in 2013. Not to mention the fire! Wow, it’s pretty amazing when you analyze your own work from this angle.

So, writers. What scares you?

Aaron Paul Lazar

www.lazarbooks.com

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Genre - Romantic Suspense

Rating – R

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Author Interview – Aaron Paul Lazar #TheSeacrest @aplazar

) Like most writers, I imagine there sometimes comes a point when you decide that a particular story just isn’t coming together right. How do you deal with those situations?

A) I’m currently working on revamping an older book I wrote in the LeGarde Mystery series, called Virtuoso. Although I think the plot is fine, the writing is a little stale and in my “older” style before I hit my current skill level. So I’m rewriting the whole thing. It’s going slowly and I’m not enjoying it. But I keep plugging away at it and it will eventually be done.

Q) Do you have a drawer full of half-written MS or topic ideas or notes for characters you’d like to write about some day?

A) I have one file called “ideas for books” that has one-liners about potential plots and plot twists – that’s it. Everything else has come full fruition into a novel. I usually start a book right away when the ideas hit me – and I can’t stop until the novel is completed.

Q) Is it easy for you to keep the plot of one series from impinging on your planning for another?

A) It’s not too hard – my characters are close to my heart and pretty real to me. So they stay unique and distinctly differentiated in my head.

General

Q) Favorite book?

A) To Kill a Mockingbird

Q) Favorite movie?

A) I can’t pick one! Can I cheat and give you my list of favorites? Murdoch Mysteries, Midsomer Murders, To Kill a Mockingbird, Shining Through, Regarding Henry, Sense and Sensibility, Forever Young, The Game, Big, The English Patient, Frequency, Corrina, Corrina, The Family Man, Dragonfly, While You Were Sleeping, The Green Mile, Witness, Peggy Sue Got Married, The Majestic, Nell, As Good As It Gets, The Birdcage, Don Juan de Marco, The Station Agent, The Human Stain, Remains of the Day, Pride & Prejudice, Under the Tuscan Sun, The American President, Fried Green Tomatoes, Bridges of Madison County, Sound of Music, The Secret Life of Bees

Q) Favorite band?

A) I have always loved the bands of my youth – The Beatles, Stones, Led Zep, Jeff Beck and others of that era. But I also love Ella Fitzgerald, Chopin, and Puccini. ;o)

Q) If you could travel in a Time Machine would you go back to the past or into the future?

A) I would go back to the 1950s to try to befriend Mr. John D. MacDonald, my favorite author of all time. His Travis McGee series are the best. I’d love to see if some of his incredible talent would rub off on me or if he’d read my manuscripts! He’s still my hero after all these years, as much as I love the writing of Dean Koontz, Laurie R. King, and Michael Prescott.

Buy Now @ Amazon & Smashwords

Genre - Romantic Suspense

Rating – R

More details about the author

Connect with Aaron Lazar on Facebook & Twitter