It’s always amazing to me when a book makes a shift from being just an idea or a concept to an actual story with a life of its own. 

Sometimes it’s a result of changing format, like when I moved from straight prose to free verse in Hugging the Rock. 

Sometimes it’s because a book has percolated long enough that it just bubbles to the surface in a boil that pours onto the page (after over 25 years of simmering as it did with Can I Pray With My Eyes Open?)

Sometimes it’s because you just keep asking your character the same question over and over again until he finally answers you just to get you to shut up. And then you make a phone call or two or three or ten (I lost track) to verify what’s real and what’s not and before you know it, you have piles of conflicts and questions without answers and people keeping secrets and dozens of scenes waiting to be written.

And so it begins.

And not all of it takes place on solid ground.