“Where did you get the idea for your book?”

“Where did you get the idea for your book?”

Authors only dislike this question when they can’t remember. In my case I have a reminder. There was an ad in a 2009 issue of Vanity Fair. I was on a plane heading for New York. Nearly all of the ads in the magazine featured blondes, but when I came to this one I stopped. “Don’t they look like they would kill you?” I said to my husband in the seat next to me. Then, menacingly, like a 1970s film trailer, “The Blondes…” I tore that ad out and when I got home framed it and placed it above my desk.