The Travelling Theatrical Tour: Inspiration

I'm hosting my very first guest blogger, and I've started with a bang. I'm delighted to introduce Cate Gardner. Cate is a writer of very fine weird fiction who has been making rather a splash lately. Her chapbook 'Nowhere Hall' was a sell out, gathering excellent reviews along the way. Her short story collection Strange Men in Pinstriped Suits, and her recent novella Barbed Wire Hearts were published to similar acclaim. Her short stories have been published in lots of places that I want to be published in like Fantasy, Shock Totem, Postscripts. . . . 

And her new book Theatre of Curious Acts, is published today. And I'm the first host on her blog tour. Isn't that great? But this isn't about me, it's about Cate, who's talking about inspiration. 

(That's rather apt as my last post was about inspiration too. In my case I get inspired by random children's toys, Cate is rather more professional about the issue.)  

First off, many thanks to Deborah for inviting me onto her blog as part of a tour to celebrate the release of my book Theatre of Curious Acts. As Deborah is an inspiring individual, I thought that a post about inspiration would be apt. So here goes…

Do you have a book of words?

Or better yet a book of titles?

Do you hear marvellous things that you think would make for super titles, but then you move on and forget what you heard? Or perhaps what you saw? Write it down.

People often tell me that my story titles are good. It's a little intimidating because now I'm afraid to call a story something like THE RAT even if one of the characters is an evil, despicable rat of a person, because I feel people expect more. Intimidating and a heck of a compliment.  Of course, those folk may be mad. In fact, I know some of them very well and they are indeed… Well, let's just say they dally with fairies.

So do you have a book of words?

Or a book of titles?

If not, get one. Buy the prettiest, or the meanest, notebook and keep a note of things. Before you know it, you'll be plucking inspiration for both stories and titles with ease (okay, almost with ease). Or, you may even find yourself weaving a story to fit a fabulous title. Is that cheating? I don't care if it is as long as I'm writing.

Start scribbling in that notebook now…

And in case you're wondering, yes, that's how Theatre of Curious Acts, my tale of Great War soldiers and the Four Horsewomen of the Apocalypse, was born. I had a title and I had some soldiers I wanted to manipulate. You can find more about the book  at www.categardner.net