Andrea Stanet

The first story I remember writing, “Who Killed Crystal?” wriggled out of my brain when I was about nine. A young girl recounts a burglary and her attempts to escape the intruder. Too bad for Crystal, she ends up telling the story as a ghost. I recall that there was a lot of upheaval going on for me at the time, and I think writing fiction helped me cope with scary nine-year-old issues. My father and older brother had introduced me to monster movies and ghost stories at a young age, so it’s no surprise I followed the horror/paranormal/fantasy path from the very beginning. Since then, I’ve always had stories in me, even those that never make it to paper. When I go too long without writing, the ideas build up and assault me in my dreams, giving me terrible nightmares until I get back to work. So now I make sure to write all the time.

I don’t exactly follow a schedule although I do prefer to write early in the morning. My brain just doesn’t work after sundown. Whatever the opposite of a vampire is, that would be me.
When we first moved to what I consider “the country” (being the city kid that I am), I had grand visions of sitting out on the patio all summer with a cup of tea drawing inspiration from the woods around us. Then I learned that the trees block most of our morning sun, and it gets buggy as the day warms up. There’s not much inspiration in a drowned gnat polluting your tea, trust me.
Now when I work, you’ll find me hunched over my laptop in the corner of our dining area, often with a space heater blowing on my feet. I have two desks, but my work space is the dining table. Go figure. My second favorite spot in the winter is in front of our pellet stove. I like to borrow one of my kids’ lap desks, wrap myself up in a blanket and sit with my back to the fire. A warm, bug-free environment and fresh brain cells are the necessary components for my creative process.