Blog

One of my favorite moments in writing happens before anything terrible actually happens.

Nothing has gone wrong yet.

No one has disappeared.

No secret has been exposed.

No relationship has completely fallen apart.

And still, something doesn't feel right.
I love that space.

Because sometimes the most effective tension isn't created by showing the reader the danger.

It's created by letting them feel it coming.

There is a difference between surprising a reader and making a reader uneasy.

I enjoy both.

But...

One of the strangest parts of writing a novel is realizing that eventually, the characters stop feeling like people I invented.

They start feeling like people I'm trying to understand.

When I begin a draft, I don't always know exactly who those people are going to become. I may have a name for a character, but that name can change. Sometimes it changes more than once. The same thing can happen with pieces of their history, their relationships, or even the way I originally imagined them.

Revision...

People sometimes ask where an idea for a book originates.

I wish I had a more remarkable answer.

The truth is, most of my stories don't start with a complete plot. They don't come with a title, a cast of characters, and a fully mapped-out ending.

Usually, they start with a question.

What if?

What if someone arrived six minutes late?

What if a letter containing everything someone needed to say was never sent?

What if one seemingly small decision changed the direction of several lives?

Those questions...

Some stories entertain us for a few hours, while others stay with us long after we’ve closed the book.


Those are the stories I’ve always wanted to write.


When I sit down to start a novel, I’m rarely interested in creating characters who are just good or bad. I’m more interested in what happens beneath the surface, the decisions people make when they are afraid, grieving, desperate, in love, or convinced they are doing the right thing.


That’s especially true with Six Minutes Late. At its core, it...