The other week, I sent out a survey to my newsletter recipients. In it, I asked several questions I wanted answers to that would help me refine my advertising game. However, I left an opening for readers to let me know what they wanted more of, and this is one of those questions. What, exactly, inspired me to write Missing?
To truly answer this, we must travel back in time to 2004. I was living in Chicago, pursuing an acting career. Acting is my first love. We met early in life and courted each other throughout the years until college, when I decided to make a commitment and become a professional. As an actor, I've always been drawn to interesting characters. The more I thought about how to portray a character, the more I realized that every character has a story to tell, even Spear Carrier #2. And when you're just starting out, you play a lot of those kind of characters. Unfortunately, playwrights don't give you a lot to work with for those characters so a lot is left to the imagination. Exploring the stories that weren't told on stage led me to a greater depth of understanding and eventually to a place where I wanted to tell the stories of those characters. Gray's story actually began as an exercise in character exploration. I wanted to know what it was like inside the head of a hard-boiled detective from the film-noir genre. It took a long time for his full story to reveal itself, and I didn't have it all on paper until ten years later. I was busy focusing on an acting career, but every now and then, Gray would whisper in the back of my brain, urging me to finish his story. Figuring out what his story was also took a while, but it was rooted in my experience in Chicago. I knew the setting would play an essential part in its telling, but I didn't know what the events would be yet. Then I saw the third Blade movie. While I wasn't particularly thrilled with it, there were parts that intrigued me. What would it be like to live in a world where vampires didn't lurk in Gothic towers or spooky cemeteries, but secretly ran multi-million dollar corporations? For giggles, I dropped Gray into this world to see what would happen, and that is where the story was truly born. I didn't begin writing in earnest until I left Chicago. I missed the city immensely, and Gray's adventures let me revisit whenever I wanted. You could even say the city became a character itself, and I wouldn't say you were wrong. Thanks for reading. If you have any other questions, drop me a line. I'd love to hear from you. Have a great weekend!
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