HAPPY THANKSGIVING!
Wow, this seems like an inappropriate day to talk about something like the end of the world, doesn't it? (But I swear it's relevant!) I must admit I love end-of-the-world stories—like Children of Men and John Christopher's Tripods series and Brian K. Vaughan's Y: The Last Man and Battlestar Galactica—there's something about surviving and starting all over that's kind of compelling (although I definitely wouldn't want to live through it myself…I'm very thankful for the world the way it is now, with TV and pre-cooked turkeys in the supermarket and airplanes and eggnog and new books all the time!)
Still, post-apocalyptic stories fascinate me, and that's why I decided to write my own! Hence the title of book one in my Avatars trilogy: So This Is How It Ends. And the premise: in the blink of an eye, five teenagers discover they are the only people left on the planet (more or less), and then they have to figure out what happened, why, and whether there's anything they can do about it.
However, I didn't want to write about plague or nuclear war or aliens or rebuilding a world or surviving without electricity (other authors have done that so well already!), so my books took a more supernatural turn, especially by book two, Shadow Falling, which just came out last month. Of course, you'll have to read them if you want to find out what kind of apocalypse I came up with!
What I'm trying to say is, if you're looking for ideas, try thinking about the kinds of stories you like, and then put your own spin on them. The TV show Heroes is certainly not the first (or the last) story about ordinary people discovering they have superpowers. Can you come up with a surprising superpower (making other people invisible!) or a surprising kind of person to give it to (the hero's dog?)? Or maybe you like romances—try thinking of two people who would be really unlikely to meet (a movie star and a bike messenger?), and then figure out how they do, why they fall in love, and what stands in their way before they can finally be together.
I know sometimes it feels like all the books have already been written and all the good ideas have already been taken. But you don't have to reinvent the universe to write a great story—you just have to make it your own. 
If you want to know more about me or my books, come visit my website and my regular blog at www.tuibooks.com!
And tell us about you…what are your favorite kinds of stories? Can you think of two books (or movies, or TV shows) that take similar ideas and tell them in totally different ways? (Chuck and Alex Rider? Twilight and Buffy?) And hey, do you have a favorite end-of-the-world story? (I'm always looking for new ones!)
Thanks for reading!
Tui Sutherland
Author of the Avatars trilogy and This Must Be Love
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