Sometimes an idea appears in your mind. Maybe it’s sparked by something you see on the street, a dream, or a conversation overheard. The origins vary, but once it gets in your head, it’s either sent forth through some medium, or it takes up residence in the infinite inner reaches of the mind. These tales living in the gray matter, but reaching far beyond, may be just a comfortable daydream. But more likely – at least in my mind – they’re realms, galaxies, battle fields, playing fields, bedrooms, mountainsides, ocean fronts and a myriad of locales that become some reality once you let them envelope you.
As these scenes and actions evolve in the imagination, they have a wont to inspire the caretaker to pour out the story for the greater conscience; building an intangible gateway from the writer’s mind to the reader’s eye. Inspire might be a resolutely half-full attitude. Because when inspiration is left alone, pushed into daydream status rather than kneaded into fruition, it becomes torment, quietly taunting the holder, reminding the person that there is something inside the mind straining to be free.
And that’s how we’ve arrived here. The story of Dax and Yousef, Lexi and Taylor, began glowing in my mind as I walked through a school, saw the students, remembered the alumni, and received my daily assault from the twenty-four hour news cycle. No one thing in particular ignited this yarn. Sometimes there’s a spark to the stories I have in my head, but this one began as kindling wood and match, poked and prodded by tidbits of daily life, glowing and smoldering, before roaring into a novel. It was assuaged and guided by parts of my mind which I had always known, but had yet to intimately visit.
While the imagination and organization of my mind had always been tasked to game plans, practice schedules and motivational speeches, they gradually began to turn their attention elsewhere. These tools which served me quite well in my professional capacity were now stirring the fire, turning over the logs, and fanning the flames of the tale in my head. The dim yet glowing story which first came to me was now a roaring blaze. When my wife later asked me why I was writing a book – which had never been a goal of mine – it came back to the blaze. “There’s a story in my head and I have to get it out,” I told her.
There was no way of saying it without sounding a little crazy. Our busy life doesn’t allow her to laugh enough, but when I spouted that particular mental health warning sign she let out an incredulous chuckle. I’m the one with imagination in our relationship and she is good at everything else. Being that I had never talked about writing a book, this has been a surprise to our family, as well as to me.
But the tools of my mind have brought me here. The glow in the distance has become a book. The only real work has been done by the people who have helped me along this journey. Writing this book and embarking on my next two stories is nothing less than unbridled fun. If I write for eight hours in a day, it feels like two.
As the characters came to me, Dax especially, the glow grew brighter. The first flame arose when Newberry Award winner Clare Vanderpool told me to write my first chapter. I’ve had the good fortune of teaching her two sons and I will always remember our parent-teacher conference turned author Q&A. She gave me great advice, the best of which was urging me to write the first chapter of the story that had taken up residence in my head.
So I wrote the first chapter clumsily, but with vigor. And as each chapter passed, with rewrite upon rewrite, I grew to learn more about the people in the book and what it would take for them to walk out of my mind and into yours.
I hope you see them in your special way and I pray that you have half as much fun reading the story of Dax and Yousef, Lexi and Taylor, as I did writing it.