Lynn Slaughter

Photo by Tobias Tullius on Unsplash

Along with every other author on the planet, one of the most frequent questions I get asked is: “Where do you get your ideas?” For me, it’s often something that I’ve directly experienced or observed that’s left a lasting impression on me.

For example, when I was in high school, a friend and I attended a Friday night teen dance at the local YMCA. A young man from a local private boys’ school asked my friend to dance. Their attraction was instant, and he didn’t leave my friend’s side for the rest of the evening. Soon, they were “going steady.”  He seemed to me to be the world’s most devoted boyfriend—always wanting to be with my friend, and when he wasn’t with her, calling her constantly and “checking in” on what she was doing, and whom she was with. She was a pretty girl, and he made it clear that she was his girlfriend and other boys better not come anywhere near her.

In my naivety, I actually thought his extreme possessiveness was romantic. I didn’t recognize any of the red flags his behavior was sending. In retrospect, I shouldn’t have been surprised that he became abusive physically and psychologically. Sadly, my friend became pregnant shortly after high school graduation and married him. Things only got worse until she finally got out of what had been a horrific marriage.

Later, when I was researching my first book, Teen Rape, a nonfiction book for the educational market, I was stunned by the frequency of teen dating violence. My friend was hardly an anomaly. Tragically, she had and still has lots of company.

So, I guess it’s not surprising that the issue of abusive relationships found its way into another one of my stories. Threaded throughout Noelle’s story of searching for her missing mother is the tale of Savannah, a young woman nearly twenty years younger, who falls madly in love with a high school classmate and marries him right after graduation. While Savannah’s closest friend recognizes that this young man’s possessive, controlling behavior spells danger, Savannah feels sure it’s just a sign of how much he loves and cares about her. She dismisses her friend’s concerns. Until she can’t.

Truthfully, writers get ideas from everywhere and anywhere. No one size fits all. But I think that the ones that grab us, that we feel passionately about, provide the best fodder for our fiction.