The unasked question

Good afternoon, Self!

Ah, the unasked question. Though my novels are selling pretty well, and have been for some time; no one has ever asked me where I got the ideas for them. I addressed the things that inspire me in an earlier post, but it's probably time to get specific. Let's take the novel that has performed best for me: Gulf of the Plains.

As I said before, the bare-bones idea for this story came to me nearly forty years ago, but the story is a combination of ideas, daydreams and what-if suppositions. All these things were spurred on by some of the alarmist claims that pervaded our society over the past ten years or so.

I read about why the Earth precesses on its axis and how it is tied up with the over-burden of oceans and continental masses around the Earth. Thus, it is out of balance. This is only a very simplistic explanation, so please don't go quoting me on it. I'm not about to try to teach a science course. Throw in the fact that the Earth's gravity fluctuates from place to place and that there are lines of electro-magnetic energy criss-crossing the world and I think you can see what gave me the idea for a polar shift. Oh, and don't forget global warming. With less of the Earth's moisture bound in ice at the poles, there is naturally more water around its middle.

I saw a documentary about how mountains were formed and how some inland volcanoes possess traces of sea water. As it turns out, faults in the sea-floor allow water to travel under the Earth's crust until it hits a pocket of magma and causes an eruption. Again, I don't teach a science class and never will, so don't quote me. Of course, there have been a number of barely noticeable earthquakes here in Oklahoma this past year or so, and that helped to inspire me. But with all this in place in my mind, it seemed to me that if global warming is the demon that people believe will destroy our civilization, the over-burden of water released from the polar ice could conceivably cause a polar shift. Insert the late-December timetable that the doomsayers have predicted and the stage was pretty well set for the story.

With all that said, I'll leave the creation of the characters; Paget Redpath, Bailey Lovell, John Sheaves and company, for later. Let me just say that two of those three were daydreams and a Ouija Board was involved in the creation of the other long ago.

Well, Self, that's the end of this trip through Derek's mind.

Thanks for checking in.
Derek A. Murphy
Author of It Happens Every Day, Taken Apart and others.
Available on Kindle