Dorothy Winsor is a former English professor at Iowa State University who taught technical writing. She served as editor of the Journal of Business and Technical Communication and won six national awards for her research on the communication practices of engineers. After retiring, she turned her talent to writing for a much different audience. She now writes young adult fantasy books published by U.K.-based Inspired Quill.

You’ve written and published five young adult fantasy books since 2015. How do your stories come to you?

Usually, they’re sparked by something I read, or hear on the news, or see on TV. When I find myself thinking, “Huh, that’s interesting,” it often means that’s an idea I can twist or slide a little sideways to create something new.

For example, I got the idea for The Wind Reader when my husband was watching the old TV show “Psyche.” That show is about a fake psychic who’s approached by the police to help solve a crime. When he succeeds in doing so, he’s stuck having to keep faking it convincingly.

I write YA fantasy and the idea of fake psychic made me think of using a fake fortune teller. My central character is marooned in a city far from home. To earn enough to eat he fakes being able to tell fortunes. Then he accidentally tells a true fortune for the prince and is taken into the castle to be the royal fortune teller, where, like the character in “Psyche,” he has to keep faking it convincingly in the midst of an assassination plot. Continue reading →