HOW I CAME TO WRITE THIS Book, Anonymous 9

HOW I WROTE THIS BOOK by Anonymous-9

Synopsis of HARD BITE, the novel

The hit-and-run driver took everything—his wife, child and legs. Now a paraplegic, Dean Trahearn unleashes payback on suspected hit-and-runners in Los Angeles. Helper-monkey Sid is his deadly assistant as a satisfying conglomeration of dirtbag-corpses piles up. Until Dean kills an innocent man by mistake. The revelation is agonizing—just as the Mexican Mafia figures out that his first murder victim was one of them. Carnales kidnap Marcie, his home-visit nurse, so Dean uses himself as bait—armed with only Sid, his wits, and a last chance at honor—to save Marcie.

How I Wrote the Book

Terry Pratchett said, “You need the darkness to let the light show up.” Triumph of the human spirit enthralls me, so I made my main character disabled, with a limited amount of life left, and burning with ambition to avenge his own hit-and-run accident. The big challenge? Making him a serial killer. Dean had to be human and sympathetic enough that you’d actually care about him, not just watch at a distance and wait for him to get caught. Obviously, this is a razor’s edge of writing, a very fine moral line, and each reader will decide if I pulled it off or crashed.

I decided Dean would follow a vigilante code of honor, and I delved into the code of the bushido plus “the officer and a gentleman” credo to get a handle on it. I got so into Miyamoto Musashi, the original badass samurai, born in 1584, that I started waking up and writing every day at 4am, just like he says he did, in the preface to THE BOOK OF FIVE RINGS. However, I didn’t stop bathing, like he did. I tried, but it was hell on my social life.

If the book doesn’t make enough money to buy me a private island with servants I don’t know what I’ll do. Probably write another one, I guess.

Check out my website www.anonymous-9.com. I’d love to hear from you.

Thanks for this forum, and the invitation to write, Patti!