WHERE DO YOU GET YOUR IDEAS?

I frequently have people ask me where I get the ideas for my nonfiction books. Sometimes I start out with a definite idea for research, but often it's more of a serendipitous trail. For example, my first published book, Petticoat Spies: Six Women Spies of the Civil War, started with research on nurses, a topic that has fascinated me since childhood when I read all the Sue Barton nurse stories. When I discovered Sarah Emma Edmonds, I learned that she disguised herself as a man during the Civil War in order to be a battlefield nurse. Later, using a variety of disguises she became a spy for the North and infiltrated the Confederate lines. She suddenly disappeared as a spy after contracting malaria. Knowing that her gender would be discovered in a hospital, she returned to civilian life. After hearing her story, I decided that spies were more exciting than nurses and proceeded to look for other female spies during that same war.