Inspirations (1)

“Where do you get your ideas?”  Is probably the question that I get asked most often, when it comes to writing.  (If it’s not about writing, the question is usually, “why are you so weird?”  And my answer to that is always: dill pickles.)

I’ve read other author blogs and been to author events where this question comes up time and time again.  Authors can’t answer the question because there is no real answer.  Mostly, ideas just come.   Stephen King once said that he gets his ideas from “everything,” and as vague as that is, he nailed it.  Ideas are floating around us all and every once in awhile, these “floating ideas” light the creative fires in your mind. 

In my novel, Impish, the ball got rolling with one of the most bizarre true stories that I’ve heard in my life.  I heard the story while I was clerking at a law firm during law school.  One of my fellow clerks, a smart and funny girl with a dicey track record for recognizing social dos and don’ts, recounted her experience in taking the LSAT.

She had to take the test twice.  The first time she sat down to take the test, she was excited and nervous.  She started answering the questions. About an hour or so into the test, she suddenly got that old, familiar signal from her bladder that she would soon have to leave the room.

Now, for those of you who haven’t had the pleasure of familiarizing yourself with the LSAT, the trickiest part about that test is the time limit.  Most of the questions can be figured out, if given enough time.  But the test is designed to force you to come up with answers very quickly, and even if you are very quick with your responses, it can still be difficult to answer all the questions in time. 

A couple minutes passed for my friend, who tried her best to ignore the calls of nature, when she realized that this feeling that her bladder was going to explode is not going away.  She knew that if she got up to go to the bathroom, she might not be able to finish the test in time, but she also knew that if she stayed, she would soon be sitting in a puddle.  The decision was a difficult one, and in the end, rather than take a quick bathroom break and do her best to finish the test, she calmly stood up, turned in her test, and signed the form that indicated her forfeiture of her score.

A few months later, she was back in the testing center for round two.  Not wanting to face a similar predicament, she emptied her bladder several times before the test even started, and wore an adult diaper, just in case.

Yep, you read that right.  She wore an adult diaper so that she wouldn’t have to miss any of those precious minutes using the restroom.  Now, I know that people sometimes have to do extraordinary things—like that guy in the fantastic 127 Hours— to survive, and I know that there are people who genuinely need assistance with adult diapers (and I’m not poking fun at that), rather, the situation was so awkward that I could hardly come up with a response.

When I asked her, as discreetly as possible, if she actually had to use the diaper, she just smiled, and wouldn’t say.  From then on, she became known in my mind as the girl who didn’t play with fire or go around kicking hornet’s nests, but instead, chose to wear a diaper. 

The summer ended and we went our separate ways, keeping in touch occasionally, but that story stuck with me.  It became one of the seeds that eventually evolved into my new novel, Impish.

The girl who wore the diaper became a central character in Impish—a friend to the guy who accidently sells his soul to hell.  I wanted to capture the academic passion someone could have, and all the eccentricities that would come along with it.

So, usually dill pickles, but in this case, a crazy story about refusing to take a bathroom break during a test.  Check out Impish: A Comedy of Horrors.

Play That Game of Checkers

I went on a date last night with my wife.  We went to this fantastic little restaurant in Coconut Grove called Jaguar—famous for its ceviche, and rightfully so.  After dinner, we went to see The Avengers (like everyone else in the world, it seems J).  The evening was very pleasant—a much needed respite from daily stresses and challenges.

We got home late, said goodbye to the babysitter, and we checked in on the kids.  As soon as their walked through their bedroom door, my son opened his eyes and smiled at me.  He sat up sleepily and whispered, “Dad, is it time to play our game?”

My heart sunk.  He’d been asking to play a game of checkers for several days, and with everything going on (those confounded daily stresses and challenges) I’d delayed the game that he was so looking forward to.  Even worse, because of my work schedule, it had been nearly two days since I’d seen my kids awake. 

After tucking him in bed and watching him fall almost instantly asleep (he really was too tired for the game, despite his excitement), I fell asleep thinking about those little moments that we lose with our kids, our loved ones, our friends.  I thought about all the times that we get so caught up in everything going on in life, that we forget to actually live—to enjoy the world around us and the relationships we have.  I thought about that precious little girl, Avery, who was diagnosed with a terminaldisease at such a young age, and her parents who made a bucket list of all the things they wanted to do with her before she passed on from her short life.  Needless to say, I promised myself that I would play that game of checkers with my son.

A few days ago, I was invited to speak and do a reading at an art club.  I read the first chapter from my newest novel, IMPISH, which also involved a father’s game of checkers with his daughter that will never be played.  (This was purely a coincidence, as I wrote that scene more than a year ago—and have only been thinking about it recently as I’m gearing up for the release of IMPISH on May 17, 2012).  I realized that for all of the outrageousness of Impish, the dark humor, offbeat characters, and crazy plot twists, an underlying theme that I kept returning to, is this idea to make every moment of life count—before it’s too late.  Now, I don’t think that we’re all going to hell as the father in this book inadvertently did (I promise that IMPISH is more lighthearted and fun than it sounds ), but life marches on and will inevitably end one day.

So today, put aside the stress and challenge of your everyday endeavors and play that game of checkers.  That’s what I’m going to do.

IMPISH

Available May 17, 2012, wherever books are sold!

IMPISH is about a young lawyer named Travis who accidently sells his soul to Satan in exchange for financial gain and some luck with the women. 

The devil is a little too backed up with attorneys, so Travis is instead assigned an Imp to help him with his endeavors, and Hell literally breaks loose.  What follows is a hilarious—at times outrageous—adventure as Travis and his Imp try to break free from the clutches of eternal damnation.

Available wherever books are sold, May 17, 2012