What inspires me? That is a tough question. What inspires me changes based on the situation. What inspires my books can be anything from a dream (that happens a lot) to a moment in time. Sometimes inspiration is like someone whispering the words to me. Buuuuut that sounds a little crazy so I'll say that some ideas just come to me.
My current work in process, Destiny Taken, came to me when I walked outside my apartment and looked up at the sky. There were a bunch of crows flying around and I wondered what would life be like if looking up and seeing dragons flying in the sky was as common as seeing birds.
That was the spark.
Then the election and bigoted comments around immigrants and people of color provided the fuel for that spark. I wanted to explore what would it be like for dragon shifters to live in this time on earth. What would they face? How would they cope with the differences? What types of changes or similarities would carry from their culture?
After coming up with an idea an an overarching theme for the book or series the hard part started.
It takes me weeks to research character profiles, technology, geography, star and planetary systems and even history to come up with a modified history for my story. Much of the research I do won't show up in the book other than to influence my description of things or in the way people deal with the past.
One example of my research was in dealing with the shapes of the dragon's pupils. I found that typically large cats do not have the slit pupils. Their pupils are round. Additionally many nonvenomous snakes have round pupils as well. While many venomous snakes have split pupils. I read further about different pupil types and why some were more advantageous then others. After completing this research I decided to go against the current images of dragons, I've envisioned my dragons to have round pupils.
Over the next few months I'll give further information and insight into some of the research that went into Destiny Taken. Also if you want to see sneak peaks at some of the lines form my works in progress, I post them periodically on my twitter account.