Inspiration is a funny thing. It can come to us like a lightning bolt, through the lyrics of a song, or in the fog of a dream. Ask any writer where their stories come from and you’ll get a myriad of answers, and in that vein I created the WHAT (What the Hell Are you Thinking?) interview. 

Today’s guest for the WHAT is Randee Dawn, author of Tune in Tomorrow: The Curious, Calamitous, Cockamamie Story Of Starr Weatherby And The Greatest Mythic Reality Show Ever

Ideas for our books can come from just about anywhere, and sometimes even we can’t pinpoint exactly how or why. Did you have a specific origin point for your book?

Having worked at a soap opera magazine for many years, I’d toyed around with the idea of basing some kind of genre-based story at a soap – like a murder mystery. But I didn’t do much with it. Later on, I was asked to come up with some ideas for a text-based online game for Choice of Games, and one of the pitches was about an actress who comes onto a soap and finds all sorts of shenanigans and machinations backstage. That story didn’t pan out to be a game, but it did get me to outline the basics of Starr Weatherby’s tale – and I realized I could make it even more accessible and fun by making it based in a fantastic world where mythical creatures ran the show.

Once the original concept existed, how did you build a plot around it?

To me, it fell in place naturally. On the one hand, Tune in Tomorrow has some familiar tropes: The show veteran who worries about keeping her place, the hard-working underlings who know everything that’s going on, a show that’s teetering on cancellation, a scheming Lothario, a wide-eyed newcomer. But they all take unexpected turns when tossed into the stew of fantasy, where so many surprising things can go wrong. So the thread of the familiar led me into the story – Starr is hired, Starr has to fight to find her place on the show amid all the creatures and humans who might not want her there – but along the way the characters sent me in new directions thanks to their personalities and abilities. 

Have you ever had the plot firmly in place, only to find it changing as the story moved from your mind to paper?

Absolutely. I wanted it to be a funny book! The first draft or two I wrote were mildly amusing, but I needed to lean into the wackiness. I started looking at scenes and saying to myself, “That’s all nice and moves the plot and so forth, but how could it be wackier?” Then I took my own advice. I also had Starr falling into her romances earlier, but realized – with some beta reader help – that the true love affair she has is with the show, not one individual (or two individuals). That was a more interesting concept to develop, so I could pare down some of the overheated scenes and get to her finding out more about herself as she became part of the fabric of the show.

Do story ideas come to you often, or is fresh material hard to come by?

There is never a dearth of story ideas! It’s about how to implement the story idea. A great plot is one thing, but you have to start it, end it and populate it with fascinating characters people care about, or at least care about seeing how things end up for them. I have loads of ideas I only wish I had time to properly sit down and work through.

How do you choose which story to write next, if you’ve got more than one percolating?

Mostly it’s what interests me the most on any given day. Right now I’m in a strange place – a book out that could have a sequel (or at least a sequel set in the same world) or a new draft of a fresh novel I wrote during the pandemic. A lot will depend on how Tune in Tomorrow sells – if it does well and my publisher wants a follow-up, I’ll tackle that next (I have about five chapters already written). If not, I plan to go back to the other novel and see if that can get sent to my editor. So those are very practical reasons for deciding what comes next. I have a hard time deciding which I’d prefer right now!

I have 6 cats and a Dalmatian (seriously, check my Instagram feed) and I usually have at least one or two snuggling with me when I write. Do you have a writing buddy, or do you find it distracting?

Not really! I do have a wonderful Westie named Birdie, but she’s always been very low-energy and thanks to some arthritis she doesn’t really climb the stairs to my office much. She has been in my office while I’ve written in the past, but I’m pretty much a solo animal on my own, living in my head as I write.

Maryland-born Randee Dawn is now a Brooklyn-based entertainment journalist who scribbles about the glam world of entertainment by day, then spends her nights crafting wild worlds of fiction. She's a former editor at The Hollywood Reporter and Soap Opera Digest, and these days covers the wacky world of show business for Variety, The Los Angeles Times, Emmy Magazine and Today.com. Dawn's obsessive love of all things Law & Order led her to appear in one episode and later co-author The Law & Order SVU: Unofficial Companion. Her short fiction has appeared in numerous anthologies and online publications; she also dreams up trivia questions for BigBrain Games. Once a month she can be found hosting Rooftop Readings at Ample Hills Creamery in Brooklyn, and when not writing she's focused on her next travel destination, and hangs out with her wonderful, funny husband and fluffy Westie. She admits she reads way too many books and consumes far too many mangoes.