I've gone underground this year, working like a fiend to get my novel The Erotica Book Club for Nice Ladies finished, proofed and off to be formatted. This week that happened and I've been thinking back to how a novel gets started. For this one, I remember it well. The inspiration for TEBC4NL (short hand for a long title) came from an art book my designer daughter brought home from the University of Iowa and left in our library. The book was about a 15th century monastery and showed illustrations recovered by historians of the garden there and other building placements. I loved the ink. It was red, red, red and I always thought I'd write about that old place. In fact, the first draft of the novel started in a monastery. For several reasons, I kept the time period and changed the location, but more later, I'm off to take another look at that book now that the novel has flown off to my favorite book designer.