Hey, folks, I have a duet movie review on Dear Author today with my horror movie soulmate, Maili (a.k.a. Jaili). Be sure to check it out!

Slither (2007) is a splatter-horror and dark comedy about a beautiful, hapless schoolteacher Starla Grant (Elizabeth Banks) and her husband, the small town’s wealthiest douchebag and the unfortunately named Grant Grant (Michael Rooker), who falls prey to the mind-altering alien slug that burrows itself into his chest after he pokes it with a stick while out for a moonlight stroll with the town slut, Brenda…

Woo-hoo, free autographed copy for one random commenter. Go for it!

Inspiration is a tricksy thing. There are many authors out there who will say that it is a glorious god come from on high, or maybe a muse who drifts down on occasion and drops off morsels of characterization for the poor frazzled author who must then ration it for the dark, blocked times ahead.

I don’t particularly like the muse theory. This is largely because I don’t like giving credit to anyone other than me for whatever nifty things show up on my computer screen. I may not entirely realize all the bits I’m putting in, but it’s definitely all me. “Muses” can suck it.

I keep fairly good track of what comes from where (whether it’s research, coauthors, editors, or that weird dream I had that one time with the carrots). I’m a magpie of a writer. I collect facts, images, details, names — I take all the shiny things. Practically speaking, I can “get” inspiration from just about anything — or everything, if you’d rather think of it that way. Every little thing that we humans experience gets folded into our heads, just waiting to be used for whatever reason. To keep the process a bit more useful and direct, though, I keep composition books full of character essays; I keep binders full of cut-out articles and photographs; I even keep a small notebook specifically for those tiny scraps of whatever that would inevitably get written down on cocktail napkins and shoved into pockets indefinitely if I didn’t have a specific place for them.

(more…)