Goodreads asked Sarina Dorie:

How do you get inspired to write?

Sarina Dorie The thing that inspire me the most is the unknown. I have always been interested in ghosts, witches, fairies, dragons, bigfoot and aliens. These topics make me ask those "what if" questions, like "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. Or I ask questions like "What if the tooth fairy ran into the bogeyman because they both work the night shift? Would they get along or compete?" This was the premise of WRATH OF THE TOOTH FAIRY, coming out next year with Reuts Publishing. Because my brain often asks these kinds of questions, I write science fiction and fantasy. I would like to say that channeling my energy into asking questions about fiction keeps me from dwelling on questions/worries that I have very little control over like economics, the environment or politics, but I probably still worry about the world too much.

I am the most inspired by the mystery of the unknown, but that isn't to say my normal life doesn't inspire my writing. Students say weird things to me all the time that I slip into my writing. My first day of teaching at a new high school, the custodian found urine in our garbage can. Theoretically this means someone urinated into the garbage can when I wasn't looking. It might also mean that the room was left unlocked before I arrived and a student peed in there. These kinds of weird things that teenagers do make it into my short stories and novels. That particular event, followed by a series of horrible incidents while teaching at that particular school led me to write the short story: FIVE TIPS FOR OUTSMARTING SATAN--AND YOUR STUDENTS. I sold that story and republished it in my collection of short stories: FAIRIES, ROBOTS AND UNICORNS--OH MY!

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