Writers build stories from what we experience in life.

I always find it interesting when other authors share what works helped inspire their stories. So this month, I want to share with you the location and creative works that helped influence my next book, The Lost One, which I am releasing later this month.

As a reminder, The Lost One is the story of two down-on-their-luck detectives who take on a job to extract a young woman from cult in Northern California.

Inspiration for stories comes from so many different places. With The Lost One, as there was with my horror novella The Roots Have Dug Into My Heart, where I live, Northern California, plays a huge role in the story.

My latest work draws on the coastal prairies of West Marin, the historic farms and ranches that I get to visit regularly for my day job, and the strange history of cults, such as Synanon, in the region. This area north of San Francisco is draped in fog with gentle hillsides dotted with cows and sheep. The roads are windy and hilly meandering through a small coastal mountain range and along a protected bay. Towns are few and far apart, a great sense of aloneness comes from the place. It evokes wonder as one stands on the shore or cliffs and stares out over the cold waters of the Pacific.

I worked hard to bring an authentic sense of this rural place so as to transport you into my story.

In addition to physical influences, I was also inspired by a number of creative works in the development of story.

So here are 3 influences that played a role in building The Lost One:

True Detective Season 1

This HBO series follows two mismatched detectives in Louisiana investigating murders and leading them down a pathway of conspiracy and occult and cosmic horror. Starring Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConaughey, True Detective Season 1 dug deep into the characters including their personal spirals and conflicts as they pursued the case relentlessly across decades. Much of the show drew from the works and ideas of writers Thomas Ligotti and Laird Barron as well as The King in Yellow written by Robert Chambers. I was inspired by the popular tropes of two partners at odds with each other and the occult weirdness that pervaded the story.

The Order of Time by Carlo Rovelli

You’re probably not expecting an occult thriller to be inspired by a book written by a quantum physicist. But the ideas of Carlo Rovelli in The Order of Time definitely played a role in the creation of the cult leader in The Lost One. I wanted a quantum physicist turned cult leader as the story’s main antagonist, and the ideas of what is time became a key part of the story. I’ve been fascinated with concepts of time having explored the ideas of Dogen and Heidegger. (Even in True Detective there is the mention that time is a flat circle.) If you want an accessible entry into an exploration of the nature of time and what it means to exist, I’d definitely recommend this book.

The weird stories of Laird Barron

Laird Barron is a master of weird fiction that overlaps with classic noir. He has been one of my go to authors for a number of years and I am always excited when a new book of his is published. Throughout many of his stories, he has created a strange mythos that pervades his work. His writing is masculine with detectives and government agents and hunters bringing forth the essence of classic tough guy noir. Then he overlays everything with his sense of the weird with his Old Leech mythos that one sees in his different stories. You can explore his writings through novels like The Croning or short story collections like The Imago Sequence. Being primarily a novella writer these days, I am also a fan of his powerful novella length works.

That’s it for what I have to share right now. I hope this inside view as to what helps influence me with my work was interesting to you.