S. Lynn Helton

I've been an avid reader since I learned how to read, and I've pretty much always imagined adventures and stories, starting with imaginative play as a child. For nearly as long, I've enjoyed writing and playing with words, so I guess I'd have to say that reading inspired me to write. Books in the speculative fiction genre (fantasy and science fiction) are what I've read the most over the years, and often as I'm reading, ideas come to me for other stories. For the children's books, I enjoyed a lot of kids' books together with my children when they were little, and I started getting ideas for some to write myself. 

I love the mountains! And yet, oddly enough, mountains haven't featured much in my stories so far. That's changing with my new paranormal cozy mystery, which is set in the mountains. Where I live there’s a great variety of weather - the mountains help make the weather pretty crazy sometimes - which tends to pop up in my stories. 

I enjoy mystery stories, and my mom introduced me to cozy mysteries a number of years ago. More recently, I discovered paranormal cozy mysteries, and I've been reading some wonderful stories in that genre. That reading has led me to ideas that I want to write. I think I've got some interesting characters and some intriguing mysteries for them to puzzle out and I'm eager to develop them. 

Some of the other characters in the Wild Heritance series have been telling me that they have more stories of their own. So, I'm exploring those. 

Aahmes began as a character intended to be a kind of mirror for Namid, the main character, something of her reflection - but not precisely. As her story developed, his story grew too, especially since I needed to understand why he acted the way he did. I’ve hopefully brought some of that understanding to my readers, too. 

I'm not sure there's any sort of balance, honestly. A story idea will grab my attention and I'm off to work on it. I'm almost always working on multiple stories at the same time. 

I suppose the biggest worldbuilding creative challenge has been determining what really needs to go into the stories and what stays more in the background for me. I really enjoy worldbuilding and like to get very detailed with how various aspects of my worlds work. But not all of that is necessarily interesting for readers, so it's a bit of a tug-of-war between what helps the story move along and what's better kept in the background to inform the characters' actions and attitudes. That can be challenging to figure out, but I love the intriguing puzzle of putting together worlds that make sense and work and still have some uniqueness to them. 

Probably Roger Zelazny first. I love his writing and when I started Namid's story many, many years ago, my writing style for those first chapters resembled his style - at least according to one early reader. After rewrites and revisions, I don't think that's the case anymore. Another author whose writing I love and whose books I reread frequently is C.S. Friedman. Overall, though, I believe that every book I read influences me to some extent, and I do love to read! 

Namid started "life" as a concept of a thief character that I intended to make different from others I had encountered to that point (many, many years ago). She absolutely evolved as I wrote the beginnings of her adventure, and rewrote it, and rewrote it again. She continued to evolve as her one book turned into a series, and then I wrote novellas with some backstory. It was a fun journey going from her rather basic origin to the character she became. 

Thank you! For fun, I had brainstormed a variety of different magic systems, coming up with ideas for ones unlike what I've encountered in my reading. I already had the concept of a ship in a fantasy story, and I picked a couple of magic systems from my ideas that I liked that would fit the characters and world I was developing for the story. 

Absolutely! I often think I know where things are heading and a character will take a turn as I'm writing, sending us both in another direction entirely. I love that discovery of a different direction and more about who my characters are. It's one of the fun things about writing! 

My love of playing games popped up in one of my books when the characters needed something to pass the time. Otherwise, it really functions more as a break for me, something else to focus on while my subconscious works on new ideas or figuring out what’s next for a story. My crafting is almost entirely that sort of break, although a craft that I discovered - that I'd like to try sometime – did appear in one of my novellas, in a minor way. 

I'd say be sure to read those genres. A lot. Read some good books and some not-so-good. Pay attention to what works and keep in mind that things from one genre can make a wonderful twist or surprise when used in a different genre. Experiment and have fun with it. 

As mentioned before, I'm working on a paranormal cozy mystery, which is showing signs of turning into a series. And there are the "side" books for my Wild Heritance fantasy series. I've also got several other ideas in the same genres floating around in my brain, including a sci-fi story I’m excited about. So, plenty in the works! 

AllAuthor has been a true pleasure to work with! I love the mockup banners, and really appreciate the increased exposure for my books.