Lynn Takacs asked this question, via Facebook, regarding a photo of me holding up three of my paperbacks, “How
did you start out on each one?”
Well Lynn, that’s a bigger question than it appears.
Naturally, I’ve been writing stuff
for most of my life, but my first book was Counterpart. Of course each book has
its mental launching point. That being said each one is unique.
For Counterpart, I actually had a super intense dream. Maybe
another person would call it a nightmare… you decide. I was at the mall. I’d
gone to pick up a friend who worked in a jewelry store. It was one of those
posh, quiet stores with the whooshing glass doors. While I waited for to get
off work a man came in a demanded a “Box.” The owner said no and got shot. Chaos
ensued with my friend screaming bloody murder. I bravely crawled over to the
owner (amazing how brave we can be in dreams!). He thrust the box into my hands
and told me to run. So I did. I dashed across the parking lot amidst a shower
of bullets, scrambled over a fence, hurtled obstacles, could hear the chase,
and somehow I ended up in a ramshackle rundown neighborhood. Spotting an
abandoned house, I dashed through the broken front door and ran up the steps to
the top floor—the attic. I can still remember how I could hear the blood
pounding in my ears in that dream. Suddenly a little old woman’s voice broke
the silence as she simply said, “Hello.” It scared me so bad, I woke up. I got
up and went into my office and wrote it all down. That’s the first chapter of
Counterpart, more-or-less. It took years for me to finish that book because I
was working full time as a physical therapist.
The next book, El Tiburon, was a combination of things.
First I ran into a constant question… How’s Sport and Sean doing? Are they
having any new adventures? I hadn’t anticipated the popularity of these
characters, especially Sport (she’s a feisty, tiny physician—athletic and
hypoglycemic—she became a favorite). The second impetus was a visit to
Guatemala. This was the first time I’d heard of the Guajeros (the inhabitants
living at the garbage dump in Guatemala City). I’m a studier of people,
obviously, and I began researching their plight. I became enamored with their
bravery. At the same time I fell in love with the ancient city of Antigua. We stayed
a month. So this all describes the background, but the starting point was
sitting down to the laptop and typing. I had no idea what the story was going
to be about… actually didn’t know what the story was about most of the time. I’ve
had many readers ask how I create so much suspense? LOL… It’s because I’m in
suspense as the author!
In The Crossfire of Revenge was Joe’s idea. He actually
wrote the first chapter. I altered it considerably, but in essence it’s his
chapter, actually half the chapter. He had great ideas and input for this story
about a youth group going on a short-term mission trip. He’s been on several as
a chaperone, and he’s been to Colombia a couple of times with a men’s group. I
combined his knowledge of Colombia with my knowledge of the jungle in Costa
Rica to create the scenes. This story is a coming of age story for the eight
teenagers. It starts with an attempted kidnapping of the youth pastor and four
of the kids. Then the group escapes into the jungle with the aid of the local
church. Sean and Sport McGee are the chaperones. Naturally no one but Sport
knows Sean is a CIA agent. With this book I had to research jungle survival,
and thanks to Jesse Smith at River City Christian I learned how a large church
would typically handle this kind of catastrophe.
Please ask questions using any means you feel like using. I
will post your question here.
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