As I sit down to write tonight, I keep thinking about how I wound up here.\u00a0 And the answer isn’t as straightforward as I’d like for it to be.<\/p>\n
How I wound up working on a real, live, actual book doesn\u2019t start with the story you’ll one day be able to read, or even the story before that.\u00a0 It starts with a story about a flock of chickens.\u00a0 Talking chickens, stuck somewhere in the mountains, attempting a migration home.<\/p>\n
I liked to think of it as \u201cWarriors, only with chickens.\u201d\u00a0 The cunning among you will immediately spot a flaw in my clever plan:\u00a0 Chickens are well equipped to become dinner, and poorly equipped to do anything else.\u00a0 There\u2019s a reason why you never read a headline that say \u201cChicken kills family of six, eats them with gravy.\u201d<\/p>\n
You\u2019ll also never read about \u201cFlock of Chickens learn to pick locks, break out of government lab and go on rampage.\u201d\u00a0 My kids have a flock whose most aggressive act is to make us breakfast.<\/p>\n
But I wrote the story.<\/p>\n
And when my magnum opus was done, I figured that while I waited for agents, editors, and Hollywood to form a rioting mob in front of my house, I might as well keep writing.<\/p>\n
So I wrote about vile monsters, genetic tampering, and misshapen, un-socialized abominations.\u00a0 Also, middle school students.\u00a0 When that was done, I had the good sense to sit on it.<\/p>\n
See, for reasons I couldn\u2019t quite put my beak on, the chicken story didn\u2019t garner rave requests. It gathered form rejections faster than a strawberry grows mold. Eventually, I gave up on it.<\/p>\n
The seeds for “Free Agent” began almost three years earlier, when I ventured out to get a last minute Christmas gift, well past the time when sane people should be out getting gifts.\u00a0 If you find yourself going to the mall at 8:30 p.m., it’s a good time to remind the person it’s the thought that counts.\u00a0 And you thought about going to the mall to get them a gift, but came to your senses.<\/p>\n
As I turned into the mall, I caught a glimpse of a woman, her trench coat wrapped around her, pushing her way through the crowds.<\/p>\n
And that image stayed with me for a long time, for reasons I couldn’t explain.\u00a0 It might have been the worried look on her face, or the fact that her eyes seemed to peer through the crowds up ahead.<\/p>\n
Flash forward about a few months.\u00a0 That night, I opened a fresh Word document and wrote down two lines of dialogue. The first belonged to a woman, who worked for the Fairy Godfather.\u00a0 The other was his.<\/p>\n
“I’ve got it, Grim.”<\/em><\/p>\n “I’ll believe that when you actually do.”<\/em><\/p>\n Who were these people?\u00a0 What was she after?\u00a0 Why?<\/p>\n Everything grew out from there.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" As I sit down to write tonight, I keep thinking about how I wound up here.\u00a0 And the answer isn’t as straightforward as I’d like…<\/p>\n