Readers often ask where I get my ideas. The truth? It’s complicated. Some come from my background as a biologist. Others are sparked by scientific papers I’ve read—or the occasional deep dive down an internet rabbit hole.

And since I’m often asked how I first ventured into steampunk romance, let’s start there—with The Golden Spider.

The Moment It Began

Before I wrote steampunk, I was already writing… other things. One day, I was chatting online with my friend Josh Dey, friend and fellow author. 

I was trying to convince her to write something involving spiders—sending her snippets of spider mythology, scientific trivia, anything that might inspire her.

Eventually, she’d had enough. “Anne, write your own #$%^& spider book.”

So I grabbed my laptop, drove to the local Barnes & Noble, and sat down to do just that.

I started asking myself: What could a spider do in a steampunk world?

With my biology background, the answer came quickly. Nerves. They look like webs—so what if a mechanical spider could weave them?

That was the spark that became The Golden Spider.

Breakfast Bones

To build my opening scene, I reached back into my own past. What would my heroine be doing if she were studying anatomy and designing a clockwork spider?

That became the opening scene where we meet Lady Amanda Ravensdale—sitting at the breakfast table, sipping tea, and studying a bone.

In the published version, it’s a femur. But in the original draft? There was also a skull on the table. 

The Scientist Behind the Scene

A quick detour into my own history explains why.

I earned a Ph.D. in Biochemistry, Cellular and Molecular Biology—but my fascination with anatomy started long before that.

In high school biology with Mrs. Campbell, we dissected everything: worms, grasshoppers, frogs—even clams (which, believe me, are much harder than they look). By senior year, I was thrilled to move on to something larger: a cat.

We nicknamed ours Fluffy—a joke, since it was a scrawny, preserved specimen.

We had no gloves, no scalpels—just Vaseline (to keep the smell from soaking into our skin) and a razor blade. And once the dissections were done, we were tasked with something far more challenging: cleaning and reassembling the skeleton.

Boiling, scraping, gluing joints together… We became the envy of the class when my father handed me airplane glue and a chemical spritz that made it dry instantly. We finished in record time.

I lost the coin toss to keep the skeleton, though—and yes, I’m still bitter.

College, Cats, and Comparative Anatomy

In college, my love of biology deepened. One of my favorite classes was Comparative Vertebrate Biology. We dissected everything from lamprey eels and sharks to axolotls and, yes, another cat.

That’s where I first encountered the “practical exam”—a nerve-wracking game of biological musical chairs. You move from station to station, identifying labeled parts of specimens before the timer goes off.

Our TA, Greg, was unforgettable—half a finger missing, a wicked sense of humor, and a gift for easing pre-exam panic. He once labeled a dried-up dissection specimen as “an example of a perfect medical school application.” We laughed, and I’ve never forgotten it.

From Biochemistry to Bones

After graduation, I detoured into physical anthropology, studying human evolution—Australopithecines, Homo erectus, and the like—in New York City.

That’s where I took Gross Anatomy alongside medical students.

It’s a humbling experience. The dissection room is officially designated a graveyard, and every specimen is a person who donated their body to science. We were told in no uncertain terms: show respect or face consequences.

We worked in teams of four, each assigned a cadaver and a full box of real human bones. Plastic models can only teach so much—details blur, small holes fill in. To truly learn anatomy, you need the real thing.

I also learned how wonderfully imperfect human bodies are. No two nerves branch the same way, no two bones are exactly alike. That’s part of what makes anatomy so fascinating.

Bones, Pigs, and Puzzling Skulls

My fascination with bones began even earlier, during my undergrad years at the University of Pennsylvania.

There, I volunteered in a repatriation program, sorting through old archaeological collections to separate human remains from animal ones.

Fun fact: the flat bones of a pig’s skull look remarkably like human skull bones.

We’d sit for hours under harsh light, comparing bone fragments to reference books, trying to tell them apart. Along the walls, shelves were lined with full skulls—some normal, others horrifyingly not.

That’s where I first saw a syphilitic skull. The bone surface looked pitted and eaten away, a visible record of disease. It was both grotesque and fascinating—a glimpse into the biology of history.

Back to The Golden Spider

All those years of biology and anatomy inevitably worked their way into Amanda’s story.

Here’s how the original opening of The Golden Spider began:

The day began much like any other day. Lady Amanda Ravensdale, daughter of the Duke of Avesbury, took a bite of buttered toast, then unhooked the skullcap of her study specimen to peer inside. She allowed herself a small, self-satisfied smile. Glinting in the faint morning light that streamed through the breakfast room windows, the thin gold wire used to trace the path of the facial nerve emerged from the internal auditory canal, just as expected.

It was delightfully macabre—a woman sipping tea across from a skull at breakfast—but in the end, it slowed the pacing. I trimmed it to what you read now in the published version, where Amanda studies a femur instead.

The spider, the nerves, the bones, the anatomy—all of it came from real experiences, filtered through a steampunk lens.

Science, Story, and a Touch of the Macabre

For me, science is never far from my story. Whether it’s a bioluminescent tattoo, a living machine, or a woman who can rebuild nerves with a clockwork spider, every book I write has its roots in the laboratory.

THE GOLDEN SPIDER – ORIGINAL

 The day began much like any other day.

Lady Amanda Ravensdale, daughter of the Duke of Avesbury, took a bite of buttered toast, then unhooked the skull cap of her study specimen to peer inside. She allowed herself a small, self-satisfied smile. Glinting in the faint morning light that streamed through the breakfast room’s windows, the thin gold wire she’d used to trace the path of the facial nerve emerged from the internal auditory canal. Just as expected.

She leaned back in her chair and sipped cold tea, returning the stare of the empty sockets of the human skull that rested on the polished mahogany dining table. She knew the names and locations of every bone and every suture. Every crest, protuberance and process. Every foramen and fossa.

Would that Olivia would arrive that she might delight in her sister’s screams of outrage. Why else bring a human skull to table?

Many of her classmates still struggled to prepare for the approaching practical examination, but would they accept the help she’d offered? Allow her to tutor them? No. She was a mere woman, her assistance automatically dismissed as inferior.

Abandoning breakfast, she lifted a femur and scanned its surface, murmuring the names of its features. Greater trochanter, medial epicondyle, linea aspera…

Amanda replaced the bone and lifted a humerus. All its features were familiar as well. She was only going through the motions. After years of self-directed anatomical study, medical school had yet to offer a challenge. Not a single question on today’s practical exam would give her any difficulty. Frustration, these hoops she must jump through before she could qualify to join a research laboratory.

A grinding of gears and a gentle bump against her chair drew her attention. “Thank you, RT,” she said, lifting a china cup filled with fresh, hot tea.

 

REFERENCES

Femur Anatomy

Tertiary Syphilis Skull

Skull Anatomy