Jack Slayer is not normal, and he never will be. All his life, he's tried to ignore the horrible things he sees that no one else ever seems to. But when his oldest brother drags him and his siblings out of bed in the middle of the night for an epic...
Thank you so much for reading! I greatly appreciate it! If you've gotten to this point, you definitely deserve some sort of prize. ;-) So, without further ado, here are fifteen fun facts about the making of Interstate Blues (title subject to change in the very near future).
1. I got the idea for the story when I was helping my dad clean out his childhood home after my grandmother passed away. I was looking through a bag of old pictures and found a couple from when he was a young teenager. These pictures were definitely the inspiration behind Jack's character.
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2. That gun he's holding... I still have it. :)
3. Each chapter of the story is the title of a book on my bookshelf. I couldn't come up with titles I was happy with and I was just staring at the bookshelf. It became my greatest tool for inspiration. Also... now you all know the types of books I read.
4. I tried to use the same format as some of my favorite shows (ie. monster of the week chapters and mythology chapters). You'll have to let me know how I did on that one.
5. Half the characters Jack meets in the story, are characters I came up with years and years before ever writing Interstate Blues. I kinda used this story as the "Great Uniter" to almost every other piece of work I came up with in the last fifteen or so years. Mostly, I stole characters from short stories or other unfinished stories I never got around to continuing.
6. Sophia Knight was one of those characters.
7. Jack and Sophia's relationship is probably one of my favorites that I've ever written.
8. Ash's birthday is January 5th, 1993. Will's is January 19th, 1997. Jack's is March 20th, 2001. And Marley's is May 31st, 2006. If you wanna know any of the other character's birthdays, just ask. I know them all. Even the most minor of characters.
9. The witch, Mercy Silver, was supposed to be evil. But she turned out to not be. Who knew? In the rewrite, she'll probably have a much bigger role toward the end of the story.
10. Ashgrove is a fictional town, partly based off a college town in the Rocky Mountains, where two of my younger sisters live. I spent about six weeks living there during my senior year of high school. And I try to make the six-hour drive at least once every couple of months to visit. It's a beautiful little town.
11. Sophia was a character I based off my little sister with the same name (that's where the similarities stop, really). I originally came up with her when I was about twelve. I wrote a scary story for my five younger siblings, mostly because they were getting on my nerves and I needed to get them to sit quietly for like ten minutes. When it was finished, I read it to the three little girls (four, six, and seven) and the two boys (eight and eleven) and no one was happy about the ending. My youngest brother freaked out and cried. But all my sisters loved it, for the most part. Especially the youngest one.
12. The Lockwood family characters first were written for a short story that my grandfather asked for. Ever since I was maybe thirteen or fourteen, he'd been giving me really open-ended writing prompts. For that particular story, the prompt was to make the central character a purse. I made like eight different drafts, before settling on Living with Georgia. But he hated it. Absolutely loathed the whole story. So... I had to redo it. Which was fair. It was pretty half-assed.
13. With the redo, I came up with the Pierce sisters. They make an appearance in this story. Emory and Ella Pierce. My grandpa framed that one. ;-)
14. Keala was actually the name of the black dog in the picture with my dad. I thought the name was really cool and her personality rocked. So, Keala in the story, is based with as much accuracy as possible on my dad's childhood dog.
15. All seven of my siblings were inspirations for one character or another. They're cool kids who I admire a lot. So, they usually end up somewhere in my works. Even if it's just a simple piece of dialogue, or an entire appearance. But then again, so do some not so awesome people I know. Hahaha.
Alrighty, well, that's pretty much all I've got for ya. But if you wanna know anything else about the story, or have any feedback, please let me know. I'm happy to chat with whoever about this story and my process for writing it.
