Guest Post by E J Simon, author of Death Never Sleeps

GUEST POST: E. J. Simon, author of Death Never Sleeps, Death Logs In and, just released, Death Logs Out.

Where do I get inspiration for my stories?

My inspiration often comes from my everyday life, the characters and people I grew up with, the places I’ve lived in or visited, sometimes it’s the dreams or nightmares, from my childhood.

Two classic movies originally inspired my current books. The first is The Godfather for how it portrayed the family, the concept of the young, straight-arrow Michael Corleone, who starts out rejecting his family’s “business” and later embraces it, becoming perhaps the most violent and dangerous of them all.

The second movie was 2001 Space Odyssey, the movie that popularized and first brought artificial intelligence to my attention. The computer on board the spacecraft, HAL, took on a mind and consciousness of his own and a will to survive, to the point where he kills off the astronauts who tried to “disconnect” him. The great physicist Stephen Hawking predicted that soon computers would be able to actually duplicate a person’s brain and mind and that a computer would eventually have a “consciousness.” This really is at the core of my books. Alex Nicholas, with the help of a breakthrough in artificial intelligence, duplicates himself on a computer – just before he is murdered.

Certain authors have inspired my writing, or at least my writing style. They would be Stuart Woods – I love the simplicity of his plots and his writing. In addition, Dan Brown and Daniel Silva for their characters and the intricate adventures inherent in their stories.

Finally, although my works are fiction, many of the characters are based upon real people, often ones I have grown up around, colorful relatives and friends, neighborhood toughs, and even people I have worked with in the corporate world (a few of whom I’d characterize as neighborhood toughs, too).

In short, my inspiration comes from the recesses of my mind, real life characters, and from various media, particularly books and movies. It’s all enough to fill a library.