So how do bloggers come up with new ideas to post?

This was a recent question on Twitter which made me ponder. Where exactly do the odd topics that appear on here have their genesis? I could at least rule out what I don’t do deliberately.

• I don’t seek out seasonal themes
• I don’t have a pre-set calendar
• I don’t even try to be hip or with it (snortle)

More of a Velma, me.

I do have many interests as can be guessed at by my twitter feed and friends on Facebook, and is even more obvious from my bookshelves. Here are a few clues – the shelves in the sitting room are awash with blue. There are books on pirates, wrecks, lighthouses, selkies and islands. Plenty of overlapping themes there!

But the dining end of the kitchen has a tall bookcase of reference books – dictionaries of witchcraft and superstition, collections of myths and legends, maps and gazetteers of folklore. Not to mention all the collected ghost stories.  A different group of fascinations – but some do connect.

And as for the fiction! Well, there’ so much amazing work I get to read ( largely thanks to Vivienne Dacosta of Serendipity Reviews) – it’s a real mind-expanding exercise. Which is just as well.

In short, I think my mind works like a 3D Venn diagram with scores of bubbles labelled ‘Viking Witches or völur ‘, ‘Sharks & other Elasmobranchs’,  #LetToysBeToys and so forth all bouncing around and intersecting merrily. This leads to all manner  of mash-ups – and that’s where I get my ideas from.

So, fellow writers, if you’re ever stuck, swing a ladle around in that soup of Stuff-U-Like and see what comes out. Or if you have another strategy, please tell…