The Writing of Ark

Readers, and other writers have asked me how the idea for the story came about.  It was really quite simple.

The Prologue of the book is a true story.  I remember standing on the corner of Bayard and George Streets in downtown New Brunswick, NJ, talking to Calvin, when the main idea of the book got my attention like a splattering bucket of rainwater.  It wasn't raining, but the idea of a story about ghosts who weren't really dead, ie, their persona's  still alive today, occurred at that moment.

Just like THAT was how it hit me.  The angle, the pitch, whatever you want to call it, the unique premise of the book is what grabbed me first.  The rest of the story hit me more like a bucket of nuts and bolts, or a bucket of loose change dumped into a coin counter, which I had to process and order in my head before I fingered the keyboard.

I reference Frank Lloyd Wright, the architect, a few times in the book out of deference to this same practice he employed.  Before searing the pencil lead onto paper, before one stroke of genius after another, all the major elements of the project were already in his head.  His brain was a tuning fork with the same pitch as Nature, and he couldn't proceed until keyed into the latter.

I started to write when I organized the beginning, and the ending, and I had a "feel" for the middle ground.  I decided to proceed, with a few notes I had jotted down as to structure and pace.  I was excited to start testing my creativity, to maneuver through the forest of the middle pages of Ark.