Hi, Kim Fielding here. As I write this, I’m on vacation with my family on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington State. If I glance up from my laptop screen I see a bay in the Strait of Juan de Fuca, where a zillion tiny crabs scuttle along the shoreline and fish leap out of the water to gobble bugs. It’s a beautiful place to be.

But I don’t want to talk about vacations this month—not exactly. What I want to discuss is another topic that hits close to home: writers’ brains.

You see, a writer’s brain is a strange place, full of mysterious and wonderful and terrifying little twists and corners. You know this if you write. Everything becomes possible story fodder. Tiny little details become fascinating. Every person we meet demands a backstory.

Like today, for example. We toured a lavender farm in Sequim (which is pronounced “skwim,” which also makes me happy), and I learned about the processes by which lavender essential oil is made and lavender blooms are harvested for culinary use. On the face of it, this has little relevance to any aspects of my life… but what if I end up with a character who inherits an organic lavender farm from his grandparents and, while learning how to operate it, falls for the handsome guy who grows hops next door?

Later, we visited a little market where one can purchase organic foods, delicious ice cream, and cannabis (the latter of which likely enhances sales of the former). I bought a frozen vegetarian meal and skipped the weed. But what about that other customer who was in there at the same time, a somewhat grizzled guy around 60, the type who looks as if he might work hauling lumber or clearing Scotch Broom out of people’s pastures? He was buying frozen tofu chicken fingers and herbal tea, along with a bottle of microbrew. For himself? For someone waiting at home, perhaps? What if a guy like him had lived closeted his whole life but recently met a younger man, a vegetarian who teaches yoga? And what if the older man resolved to try a few things his new love interest likes, just to see if this weird thing between them could possibly work?

And then I took a walk on a gravel beach and imagined some aquatic being—a merman? A Strömkarlen?—popping his head out of that water and catching sight of a handsome guy who was standing on the nearby dock. But the guy on the dock is a visitor from New Mexico, so how can they possibly make anything work?

So you see what I mean. A vacation day with my family and my squirrely little writer’s brain is hopping all over the place, gleefully collecting trivia and capturing plot bunnies. I’ll never complain about having a writer’s brain, but it certainly can complicate life. You know what’s fun, though? Reading a book and wondering what person or experience led the author to include a particular bit. Now if you read my books, you can be on the lookout for lavender, hippie food/cannabis markets, and water spirits. And you’ll know where they came from.

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Kim Fielding is the bestselling author of numerous m/m romance novels, novellas, and short stories. Like Kim herself, her work is eclectic, spanning genres such as contemporary, fantasy, paranormal, and historical. Her stories are set in alternate worlds, in 15th century Bosnia, in modern-day Oregon. Her heroes are hipster architect werewolves, housekeepers, maimed giants, and conflicted graduate students. They’re usually flawed, they often encounter terrible obstacles, but they always find love.

After having migrated back and forth across the western two-thirds of the United States, Kim calls the boring part of California home. She lives there with her husband, her two daughters, and her day job as a university professor, but escapes as often as possible via car, train, plane, or boat. This may explain why her characters often seem to be in transit as well. She dreams of traveling and writing full-time.

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