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Today I’m welcoming Anne Louise Bannon to Salty Inspirations to talk about her latest release, Death of a Proper Bostonian. In this guest post, Anne shares some of the unexpected places story ideas can come from and why inspiration isn’t always as straightforward as it seems.
IT CAME TO ME IN A DREAM (OR SOME OF THE, UM, DUMB PLACES I’VE GOTTEN IDEAS FROM)
By Anne Louise Bannon
It’s kinda out there that authors don’t really like being asked where they get their ideas from. And I’m one of those authors, not because I don’t want to share my process, but because…
Well, I can only write for myself, but I find that the question is frequently not that easy to answer. The standard answer is that ideas are everywhere. I get that can be pretty discouraging to beginning writers who know they’ve got a story in them, but can’t figure out what to write. Ideas really are everywhere, but sometimes it’s hard to know how to find them. Which is why I generally try to give a solid answer when asked where I get mine. But there are times when you just don’t want to share that you were in, um, the bathroom when it all hit.
Then there’s the whole “I dreamed it” response. I have to concede that some of my best ideas have come to me that way. The first book in my 1920s series, Fascinating Rhythm, partly started with a dream after I spilled a cheesecake while trying to get it into the oven. A dream inspired my reluctant P.I. story, Rage Issues, and that worked out pretty well. But still, the whole dreams thing seems a touch woo-woo or even cheesy.
I often tell the story about how I put a stiff into the middle of a lovely lecture my husband was giving on the zanja system in Los Angeles (which was how they irrigated the farms before Mulholland). That not only became Death of the Zanjero, it resulted in the rest of the series as well.
That’s the easy one to answer. But there’s book four, Death of an Heiress. Do I really want it out there whose skanky behavior inspired it, however indirectly they did so? I write murder mysteries, for crying out loud. People acting badly are part of the process. But I don’t want to get the wrong people mad at me. Or hurt anybody’s feelings.
There’s also the reality that a lot of my ideas come from some pretty mundane, and even dumb places. Like spilling cheesecake all over my kitchen floor while dancing along to Fascinating Rhythm. Or wondering what’s behind my annoying neighbor’s hoarding issue. Or the heavy-set man sitting behind me on the light rail train who was snoring quite loudly. I’m even working on a story whose solution is a city planning document, which is possibly the most boring thing in the world.
Then there’s the really embarrassing truth is that I can’t always remember what sparked an idea. Books two and three in the Old Los Angeles series (Death of the City Marshal and Death of the Chinese Fieldhands) were inspired by historical events. Death of the Drunkard came out of a side mention in Zanjero. But can I remember what I was thinking when I decided to send my character Maddie Wilcox back to visit her family in Boston? I don’t even remember when it started to come together.
There was this scene – the shooting of naturalist John Wilcox, and Maddie’s response to it – that slowly grew inside me and eventually turned into Death of a Proper Bostonian. As well as a couple of other scenes that involve spoilers and I am death on spoilers. Where they came from, I have no idea, especially since I changed my mind about some things I sort of set up in
Death of the Zanjero. My original plan was to never send Maddie back home, and she didn’t have much of a relationship with her family beyond her memories of her beloved mother. Only her relationship with her family got going before Zanjero was even finished.
Ideas are everywhere, and it doesn’t matter where they come form. The trick is not letting them go just because it was something in the supermarket that got you thinking.
Death of a Proper Bostonian (Old Los Angeles) by Anne Louise BannonAbout Death of a Proper Bostonian
Death of a Proper Bostonian (Old Los Angeles)
Historical Mystery
6th in Series
Setting – Boston, 1873
Publisher : Healcroft House, Publishers
Publication date : June 12, 2026
Digital
ISBN-13 : 978-1948616539
ASIN : B0GMLGMMGM
A deadly homecoming It’s August 1873, and at long last, physician and winemaker Maddie Franklin Wilcox makes the journey home to her beloved native Boston. Her business is to deliver her ward and apprentice, Elena Ortiz, to the local women’s medical school, and that also includes visiting her father, her sister and her family. But at a dinner with the family of Maddie’s late and very much unlamented (at least, on her part) husband, young John Wilcox, a cousin there to entertain the guests with his nature talk, is shot. Then the next morning, the eldest of the Wilcox brothers is found shot in his bed. Maddie quickly concludes that the shooting of the oh, so charming naturalist was but a distraction for the shooting of her former brother-in-law. Chased by a corrupt Boston police officer, confronted again and again by the relentless prejudice of the city’s medical practitioners, and in danger of losing her heart to young John Wilcox (who had plenty of reasons to want his cousin dead), Maddie’s happy homecoming becomes a morass of suspicion with someone willing to kill her and the people she loves.
About Anne Louise Bannon
Author Anne Louise Bannon’s husband says that his wife kills people for a living. Bannon does mostly write mysteries, including the Old Los Angeles Series, the Freddie and Kathy series, and the Operation Quickline series. She has worked as a freelance journalist for magazines and newspapers, including the Los Angeles Times. She and her husband, Michael Holland, created a wine education blog, and she co-wrote a book on poisons. She and her husband live in Southern California with an assortment of critters. Visit her website at AnneLouiseBannon.com.
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Thank you to Anne Louise Bannon for stopping by Salty Inspirations today and sharing a look at the creative process behind her stories. If Death of a Proper Bostonian sounds like a book you’d enjoy, be sure to add it to your TBR and check out the links below. While you’re here, take a look around the blog for more book features, guest authors, and cozy mystery content.
As always, thanks for stopping by for some Salty Inspirations! —Michelle❤️
