If a writer was born in the last 60 years, there's a pretty good chance they'll list Stephen King among their influences. King has consistently - and prolifically - provided his audience with quality entertainment in the form of novels, television, and movies since Carrie was published in 1974. It's actually difficult to point out any one area in which King has influenced me. I've been reading his works almost as long as I've been writing, so it becomes a sort of chicken and egg scenario.
What I can say is that King has given me explicit permission to tell people I don't know where my ideas come from. Sure, I get some of them from the usual places (dreams, riffs on existing materials), but some of them just appear *poof* in my head. I know some people think that writers have a secret method for coming up with ideas, but if they do, no one has let me in on it. Not only do I have no clue where I get my ideas, I get so many ideas, I couldn't possibly work on all of them. Some of them are also terrible ideas, but I sort those out on my own.
The idea behind the Divine Words series was a simple one. What if a necromancer was a good guy? That idea was closely followed by the thought that you'd need something equally tireless as the undead in order to fight a necromancer. The answer poofed into my head in the form of golems. I initially envisioned some sort of kaiju versus robot kind of thing, but that idea was rapidly replaced by a more realistic (don't laugh) examination of the logistical issues with commanding a legion of the undead. The rest of Divine Words just snowballed from there.
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