​HOW I GOT HERE

The decision to write a novel was not the result of fore-thought or planning.  Nor was it in response to a bet or dare.  It was purely accidental.

I always enjoyed writing and often write to vent or express feelings or reactions; usually a paragraph or two.  Perhaps even as much as a couple of pages, but nothing more. The precipitating event for my first novel occurred, one day, as I walked my dog along the oceanfront at 4:30 a.m. I muttered something, aloud about the existing conditions and perhaps a hundred or so yards later decided that what I had muttered would be a great line in a story.  (I won’t disclose it, since it’s in the novel) When I returned home I wrote it down and roughly one week later sat down and began to write.

I didn’t start out with the intent of writing a book… just to formulate a story around my early morning utterance.  However, once started the story grabbed me, drew me in and urged me on.  After six years, a number of revisions, corrections, and re-writes I had a full length novel. What’s more is the fact that in the last chapter I saw the easy move into a second and possibly third story; all resulting from the first.  I had trapped myself… I was hooked. 

​J.J. Burke