A Story Gets Hatched in a Hot Tub

The storyline for the book Hate was hatched sitting in a hot tub late at night in 2003.  I can’t even remember the genesis for the book.  I had always wanted to write a novel.  Although, I consider myself a decent writer, I just didn’t how to start.  After a few “ugly” paragraphs, I switched gears and thought I am a very visual person.  Perhaps not a novel, but a screenplay?

I wrote probably 20 pages of an 80-page screenplay.  I can’t even remember why, perhaps life got in the way or perhaps the writing spark had no longer been there, but the screenplay laid dormant.  14 years later, in 2016, the writing bug bit again.  In a matter of months, the screenplay had been completed. The next year, I had an idea of using the screenplay as an outline for the novel, since the characters were fleshed out and the dialogue had been written.

I wrote a dozen pages and asked my wife Zoe to read it and tell me what she thought.  She hated it!  She said it was like reading a newspaper.  Back to the drawing board.  I re-wrote the dozen or so pages and asked her again to look at it.  She liked it!

Over the course of three months, the book seemed to pour out of me.  I worked with Zoe on edits, re-writes and plot twists. March 17, 2018, the book was published on Amazon/Kindle.