Dear Readers,

Twinkly lights, soft snow, craft fairs full of creativity. I find this time of year very inspirational. I love Christmas, and this year will be especially special, since we will be able to sleep in our house!

As you can see the shingles are almost all on!

We might even start a fire in this fireplace!

Also, although Ori is too young still to really understand what is going on, he definitely knows something is happening, which is so fun. He is learning new words every day, which adds to the magic.
I remember so vividly when he was this little--time really does pass a lot more quickly now!

Adding even more to the magic is the fact that we will be heading to Disney World in just a few weeks. I was invited to speak at a school in Tampa, and so we decided to weave in a Disney trip too. I think that Ori is going to love spending lots of time with us.

So, inspiration! I thought this might be a good topic for this newsletter--in terms of how I got inspiration for some of my books.

Most of my books have been inspired during walks in the woods. I think there are many factors that contribute to this, including that I am separated from technology, and that I like talking out story ideas, so I often have long story chats with Luke or whomever I'm walking with.

These are some of the titles that I dreamed up on hikes:
- Heartwood Hotel, dreamed up when I was hiking with Luke down Garibaldi Mountain and saw a massive tree
- Wings of Olympus, inspired by a hike up Mount Olympus in Greece, where Luke and I were caught in a thunderstorm
- The Lost Gift, I thought of on a hike in the Tetrahedron on the Sunshine Coast, searching for wild blueberries
- Crimson Twill, one of my latest, but not published yet, came to me on a walk along the seawall in Vancouver.

Other books were a result of brainstorming and doodling in my notebook. Still others were the result of conversations with friends. And reading other books provides inspiration too.

Ori is giving me a little inspiration lately too. Lately he has been doing actions to all his books, if he can. For example, if there is a line "The sun shines", Ori will raise his hands up to pretend to be a shining sun. So, for my latest picture book that I'm working on, which is for quite young children, I am running it by Ori, to see if he can do all the actions!
It's SO fun to collaborate a bit with him.

How do you get inspiration? Do you think inspiration can be helped by deadlines? Does inspiration come when you are looking for it, or when you are not? If you have kids, do you find children help inspire your creativity? Or, because they are so much work, do you feel more exhausted?

Haha! I don't know!

More in the NEW YEAR! 2020 sounds magical, doesn't it?

xo
Kallie