Writing Life

I’m just creeping past the halfway point of the third dangerous book. By this point, I’m totally immersed in the story. The characters are as real as any of the 3D people I interact with--actually, they’re more real--because story people share their every thought and their deepest secrets. With them, there’s no holding back. I don’t find much of that in day-to-day life.

Then too, the characters lead a much more exciting life than I do. My job is simply to get everything that’s happening in my head etched onto the hard drive.

Before I began writing fiction, stories ran in my head for as long as I can remember. I didn’t record them. And I never finished them. In fact, if one cast played for too long, I deliberately replaced them with a new ensemble--worried that they might become too real.

Now, I complete every story I commit to writing and I work hard to portray the characters as authentically as possible.

Life is not only stranger than fiction--it is populated with incomprehensible natives. When people ask me where I get the ideas for the stories I write, I want to seem sane. Therefore, I try to say something sensible. But the fact is, I have no idea.