We writers live in a strange and unsettling world of possibilities. Ideas spin around our heads at all hours, demanding we wake up at three in the morning to jot them down, or grab a napkin or piece of restroom paper towel (or better yet, or phones) to take them down when they present themselves, lest they flit away like butterflies on the summer wind.

Half the work of being a writer is learning to open yourself up to them, to learn how to unfold them like the flowers they are and help them grow into something complex and beautiful.

A year ago, I was at the Dreamspinner retreat. I had just finished the last book in my second trilogy, and was casting about for what to do next. I’d connected the Liminal Sky trilogy with the Oberon Cycle trilogy, but there was just one small problem. In the latter, Earth was alive and well, and in the first one, I had pretty much killed of all life on our mother world.

I sat down with the head of marketing, Amelia, and she suggested that I do a stand-alone book next. I thought back to my dilemma, and realized I had the idea for my story… how humankind back on Earth survived the end of the world.

Amelia loved the idea, and so off I went. Over the next few months, I devoured everything I could find about the moon. I bought a lunar atlas and read it from cover to cover, and learned everything I could about the moon. Did you know there’s a huge mass under the moon’s south pole that scientists think is an asteroid that smashed into what was once a much smaller moon? Or how about that moon dust is more dangerous to human lungs than asbestos, or that it might be used one day to create everyday objects via 3D printing?

Or that there are huge lava tubes on the moon that might be ideal for a moonbase?

All of this went into the idea soil, and then it sprouted and began to grow. Month by month it flourished, adding branches and new blooms.

Now it’s finished. Later this week, I will transplant it, submitting it for pitch wars with my fingers crossed. It’s grown from the little seed a year ago into a beautiful story, and I could’t be prouder.

We live in a world of possibilities, and sometimes we authors get lucky to pluck a good one out of thin are, and make something great.