Wishes and Pies: My Pitch Wars Novel Inspiration

My Pitch Wars novel, WISHES TO NOWHERE, is full of magic. The idea came to me as the opening lines of the manuscript, which haven’t changed much in the three years since I first wrote them as part of a NaNoWriMo novel:

Birthday parties made her nervous. Itchy. She didn’t mind the screaming kids, puddles of melted ice cream or even the clowns who twisted dogs out of skinny, colored balloons.

It was the birthday candles and subsequent wishes that did it.

Wishes tended to complicate life for Claire McCallie.

I knew from the start that this was a story of a girl who could make wishes come true just by thinking about them. I knew that this ability would have some serious consequences, you know like accidentally wishing her brother out of existence and having no way of getting him back. I also knew that fate would play a big role in the story because I am fascinated by how fate and human nature play off of each other.

What I didn’t know was that my love of the delightful—and cancelled too soon—TV show Pushing Daisies would infuse the story with even more whimsy and magic. (Oh yeah, and pie. Because you can never have too much pie. Seriously. Go check out my Pinterest board for this novel for some fun pie recipes.)

At its core, this book is about loss and guilt and regrets. It’s about family bonds and accepting who you are and moving on. And it’s about finding happiness once thought lost forever.

But as I started developing my characters and plotting how these things would fuel Claire’s story, it became clear that the things I’m drawn to most as a writer—and as a reader/TV-watcher/story-consumer—are quirky, out-there ideas and characters. And that’s exactly what I wanted to put into this book. What I want to put into all of my books, really.

So I created the town of Nowhere, North Carolina, which is a magical lost and found where emotionally lost people wind up so they can find whatever they are looking for; a spit-fire old woman who bakes the towns’ secrets into pies to keep them from getting out; fruit trees that have personalities like people and can be generous and jealous and loving and spiteful and stingy and a whole host of other things depending on their moods; and wishes that pop out of thin air on small slips of paper and refused to be ignored.

I used these different magical elements to add a whole ’nother layer to Claire’s story, providing even more tension and conflict and emotional upheaval along with the inherent whimsical flair. And they gave me some of my favorite scenes in the whole book.

Pitch Wars Blog Hop

If you want to hear the stories behind some of the other Pitch Wars books from mentees and alternates, click on the links below:

Carleen Karanovic: HOPE ON A FEATHER | Heather Truett: RENASCENCE | Tracie Martin: WILD IS THE WIND | Susan Bickford: FRAMED | Rachel Sarah: RULES FOR RUNNING AWAY | Amanda Rawson Hill: GRIMM AND BEAR IT | Charlotte Gruber: CODE OF SILENCE | Kip Wilson: THE MOST DAZZLING GIRL IN BERLIN | Mary Ann Nicholson: CALAMITY | Nikki Roberti: THE TRUTH ABOUT TWO-SHOES | Anna Patel: EXODUS | A. Reynolds: LE CIRQUE DU LITERATI | Ron Walters: THE GOLEM INITIATIVE | Rosalyn Eves: THE BLOOD ROSE REBELLION | Ashley Poston: HEART OF IRON | Mara Rutherford: WINTERSOUL | Janet Walden-West: Damned If She Do | Kazul Wolf: SUMMER THUNDER | D. Grimm: WITCHER | Kelli Newby: THORNVAAL | Tara Sim: TIMEKEEPER | Elliah Terry: POCKET FULL OF POPPIES | Alessa Hinlo: THE HONEST THIEF | Rachel Horwitz: THE BOOTLEGGER’S BIBLE | Whitney Taylor: DEFINITIONS OF INDEFINABLE THINGS | Lyra Selene: REVERIE | Natalie Williamson: SET IN STONE | Robin Lemke: THE DANCE OF THE PALMS | Stephanie Herman: CLIFF WITH NO EDGE | Shannon Cooley: A FROG, A WHISTLE, AND A VIAL OF SAND | Ruth Anne Snow: THE GIRLS OF MARCH | Elizabeth Dimit: PHOEBE FRANZ’S GUIDE TO PASSPORTS, PAGEANTS, & PARENTAL DISASTERS | Gwen C. Katz: AMONG THE RED STARS | Jennifer Hawkins: FALSE START | Kelly DeVos: THE WHITE LEHUA  | Gina Denny: SANDS OF IMMORTALITY | Natasha M. Heck: FOLLOW THE MOON | Esher Hogan – Walking After Midnight | D.A. Mages: THE MEMORY OF OBJECTS