Goodreads asked Sarina Dorie:

Where did you get the idea for your most recent book?

Sarina Dorie I often use inspiration from my daily life in my novels. For THE MEMORY THIEF series, I used a lot of things I learned in different areas of my life. I used to live in Japan on the northern island of Hokkaido where it is very cold. This is where the "Native Japanese" lived, the pre-Japanese colonists. The idea of the Ainu being forced off their land much like the Native Americans in the U.S. heavily influenced the creation of the series, combined with my love of steampunk aesthetics from costume making, and my experience doing Civil War Reenactments when I was in high school and college. I took all those different ideas: the Ainu displacement, ruffled bloomers, and Victorian social etiquette and put it in space. The concept became: What would the Victorian era look like if they had rediscovered spaceflight and found a pre-colonized planet of Japanese Ainu?

For WOMBY'S SCHOOL FOR WAYWARD WITCHES, my daily struggles as a school teacher are a major influence combined with my love of Harry Potter. I have always wondered what it would be like to be a teacher at Hogwarts. For years I have wondered, "What if there was a magical school for at risk youth--not like Hogwarts--more like one of the title one schools I have worked at?" This is the premise of WOMBY'S SCHOOL FOR WAYWARD WITCHES. I am not a kid anymore and I wanted to write about being a teacher, but not in non-fiction or fiction. I wanted to do a reality check on all the perfect parts of Hogwarts that wouldn't happen.

Every once in a while I see a meme or read a joke about things students would actually use their magic wands for that wouldn't be magic, or how the point system for a "house" award doesn't motivate kids who don't have a desire for intrinsic or extrinsic motivation to do better. I like teacher memes on Pinterest that point out the pain and pathos of teaching that might be accessible to non-teachers if put in the right context like, "I don't always care about my grade, but when I do it is on the last day of the semester after all work was due." I channel a lot of that into my writing.

I considered making the main character/teacher in WOMBY'S SCHOOL FOR WAYWARD WITCHES a music teacher or Spanish teacher, but I know more about teaching art. Also, I wouldn't be able to incorporate some of the same humor from my life. I have worked at numerous schools that cut the art elective due to budget cuts. At my first teaching position I was the fifth art teacher in six years and we joked I was the equivalent of the defense against the dark arts teacher from Harry Potter and a werewolf was going to eat me. As a matter of fact, a blood-thirsty werewolf did get me, if a principal counts as a werewolf, so I became the fifth art teacher in seven years. But that is a long story I prefer to channel into my writing rather than tell as non-fiction.

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