From the first paragraph of “In the Realm of Ash and Sorrow” by Kenneth Harmon, I was sucked into the story, reading as fast as I could, anxious to find out what happened to the American pilot whose aircraft is shot down over Hiroshima.

The world Kenneth took me through was completely foreign to me. But his obvious familiarity with the land, the customs and the period right before all hell broke loose was so vivid and so believable, I felt I was right there watching the story unfold before my eyes.

The fate of the pilot was just the beginning of a saga that encompasses several compelling dramas, both big and small, and crosses over from the living world into the afterlife and back again. It’s as magical as it is realistic, and the realism is as magical as the great beyond is real. All of it meshes together into a seamless story I will never forget.

As soon as I finished reading “Ash and Sorrow” I asked the Kenneth if he would share where his boundless inspiration comes from. He kindly agreed. Here is his story behind his stories, which in itself is inspiring:

During a recent walk with my wife, Monika, the subject of writing came up. I told Monika that I don’t like to give myself a lot of credit for my writing because I believe whatever talent I possess was a God-given gift, and it was up to me to develop that gift, which I have done over many years of studying the craft, reading, attending critique groups, and a whole lot of practice. I sometimes believe that a divine force could also be involved in the process of inspiring my work. For example; one night, as I was walking through the master bathroom, I stopped in front of the mirror as the idea for a novel popped into my mind. Everything I needed to write this book came to me in the blink of an eye; the setting (India), characters, and the plot. How did this happen? I wasn’t even thinking about writing at the time.

Several years earlier, I was writing scary stories for my niece and nephew. One evening, I sat on the couch with a notebook and within 20 minutes, had come up with the plot for over 30 stories. Another time, while in the shower, I thought up plots for over 40 stories. However, not all stories come to me as quickly. My last novel, In the Realm of Ash and Sorrow, started with the vision of a man falling through the sky. Why was he falling? Where was he falling? I remembered that I had done some research on the atomic bombing of Hiroshima for another book, and so I decided to set the story during the closing months of World War 2 in Hiroshima. My protagonist, Micah Lund, would be a B-29 bombardier who is falling without a parachute. The rest of the plot evolved more slowly, some of it through the research I had to do. I compiled over 9,000 pages of research for In the Realm of Ash and Sorrow. I came across a map of Hiroshima from the time of the bombing, with all the buildings labeled in Japanese. I spent over a week translating the name on each building. Anything and everything to make the book authentic.

For my current work-in-progress, I had to go back to brainstorming. My newly acquired agent, Lindsay Guzzardo, asked me to put together a list of plot ideas for a novel. Since it would be the follow-up to In the Realm of Ash and Sorrow, she thought the book should similar elements. I sat down on a Saturday and came up with a list of 8 novel plots.

The plot we finally settled on did come to me in an instant, much like the India novel had inside my bathroom. In a matter of seconds I had; World War 2, nurses, sisters, Okinawa, South Dakota, Lakota, Pine Ridge Reservation, PTSD. And from these flashes of inspiration, I formed the plot for As the Light Lies: two Lakota sisters from the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota join the US Army Nursing Corps in World War 2. While serving on Okinawa, the protagonist meets and falls in love with an officer from Texas working as a historian for the Army. Events on Okinawa leave the protagonist with a serious case of battle fatigue, or what is now called Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, or PTSD. She returns home to the Pine Ridge Reservation suffering from PTSD and must find a way to overcome her depression if she wants to have some semblance of a normal life.

Of course, the plot is much deeper than this, but the directive from Lindsay started everything in motion. Ultimately, what’s more important than inspiration, is what a writer does with that inspiration. It is my responsibility to create stories that will entertain, and hopefully inspire, readers.