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Acclaimed author Anne Bishop explains what inspired Tangled Webs, the latest novel in her best-selling Black Jewels series

Weaving a story. Spinning a tale. Common imagery for the craft of storytelling, but especially appropriate for a novel called Tangled Webs. There are so many strands that have to be gathered in order to shape a place and characters; there are so many threads that have to be woven over the frame of an idea in order for a story to come to life.

The idea for this story was quite simple: trap some of the Blood in a haunted house and deprive them of the ability to use their power.

Well, that sounded like fun, but I had no thoughts about how that would happen and I was writing another story at the time, so I nudged it to the side where it could simmer. Or gather dust bunnies.

Some ideas do that.

This one simmered quietly for months, adding another idea here, a plot point there, slowly gathering its strands.

Surreal got tapped to be the Girl In Danger. That opened up the question of how to put someone as dangerous as Surreal in danger. More thoughts. More simmering. More strands of who and how and where and why.

Parallels and tangles. Lies meant to ensnare.

And let's not forget family dynamics and all the potential collisions when strong personalities are not completely in agreement.

The simple web of an idea and all the strands that took on different shapes like a cat's cradle finally formed a pattern that was the right pattern to be the frame of this story. At that point I took a deep breath and began my dance with the Muse to write a story about the SaDiablo family and a spooky house.

Even though I've written eleven novels, can I tell you exactly how an idea becomes a story? No, I can't. Sometimes it's a picture in a book or magazine that provides the first strand that begins to shape an idea into something more. Sometimes it's a sentence in a book. And sometimes it's music.

Many writers listen to music while they write. I use music as an emotive tuning fork for a story, settling me into the right kind of energy for particular kinds of scenes.

Kenny Loggins' song "Danger Zone" gave me the heat and tone for the Den of Iniquity in Sebastian. Loreena McKennitt's "Huron ‘Beltane' Fire Dance" was the inspiration for the Fire Dance in The Invisible Ring. And some of Philip Glass's music for Koyaanisqatsi has been taking me to the Keep and the Realms of the Blood for the past twenty years.

For Tangled Webs? Koyaanisqatsi was the warm-up music. I didn't find any songs that fit the lighter "domestic" scenes, but the music that had the right beat and energy for the spooky house chapters, when Surreal and Rainier are players in a deadly game, were tracks from Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, especially the track for "The Kracken."

Spinning a story. Weaving a tale. It's more than words on a page. It's the bare branches of a tree against a winter sky glimpsed in passing. It's the moment when the mind transforms sound into image.

It is its own kind of magic.

I hope you enjoy the visions you'll find in Tangled Webs.