By Rebecca Anderson, Author of Whispers of Shadowbrook House

Do you know what a Japanese Snow Fairy is?
If you do, are you picturing it? If you don’t, does the name make your brain tingle?
This, friends, is how a book is born.
I mean, sometimes. For me. When I’m lucky.

Kind of like this: I hear about a thing. I think it sounds interesting. I do a simple search, which sometimes (the best times) leads to a more complicated search, which leads to a deep dive (aka rabbit hole), and then, occasionally, a new obsession.

I can’t get it out of my head until I write it into a story. And in the very best instances, the story can’t live without the details of the obsession. The cool new thing I learned becomes central to the story’s plot, conflict, or character growth.

This has happened for me with diseases (both obscure and prevalent), with traditional foods, with legislation, with countless historical events, with animals located in particular regions, with historical skirt silhouettes, with secret family recipes, and with the question of whether excessive microwave popcorn consumption can actually increase my likelihood of developing certain kinds of cancer. (I’m fine. Don’t worry.)

I’ve gone down rabbit holes about birds and bears and beetles (and, naturally, rabbits). I’ve studied so many reasons a person’s teeth might fall out. I’ve wondered how lead paint is dangerous (I mean, I believe it harms people—I just wanted to know how). I’ve looked into how a person who owns silk gowns in Victorian England gets those gowns cleaned if water ruins silk. Toothbrushes. Train engines and train cars. Musical instruments. Weather phenomena.

And one of the greatest things about living in this age of immediate digital access to information is that we also live in an age of actual humans who know things and want to talk about them. Even though I can Google a thing, the internet doesn’t have to stop me from asking a person about that thing.

I’ve had amazing conversations with people much smarter than myself about how book presses work. About welding. About a famous author’s writing habits. About the properties of different coffee roasts. About why you want to plant certain vegetables near each other in your garden. About how scratch-and-sniff stickers are made. About who decides what land gets chosen for controlled burns and why. About Axl Rose and Slash. About the pros and cons of various film adaptations of classic novels. About yoga poses. About tattoos and ink. About which foods should definitely be made fresh versus which ones freeze well. About dentistry. About haunted houses. About what happens to library books when they don’t get checked out. About how to get Sharpie off a whiteboard. About dictation programs. About teaching kids to read (and how it’s different, kind of, from teaching adults to read). About rehab. About the purported healing properties of certain stones. About the deep lore of fantasy fiction.

And on. And on.

One of my favorite phrases to hear is, “Did you know . . . ?” because chances are good I’m about to learn a whole lot of fascinating details about something interesting. Even better? It’s coming from a person who lights up with their knowledge. Sharing stories and facts and trivia is a love language, and I’m all about it.

So consider: Next time you share your love of tiny flying puffball birds that look like joy itself, it might spark someone to write a book featuring Japanese Snow Fairies. Maybe that someone is you!

NEW! Whispers of Shadowbrook House: In the crumbling Shadowbrook House, governess Pearl Ellicott and heir Oliver Waverly unravel a haunting mystery while confronting their growing forbidden love.

This is Rebecca Anderson. High school English teacher by day, writer by night (or very early morning). She loves hiking, Broadway shows, food, books, and movies. She is happily married and a mom to four above-average kids.