The Story Behind the Story

I’ve been asked a lot of different questions about my book. One question that gets asked quite often is – what inspired me to write this story?

A Sampling of Early House Sketches

It’s actually the story behind the story and it goes back nearly ten years ago. My daughter and I had a daily morning ritual to drive by the lake that is near our home on our way to her school and my work. Nearly every day, the route we took went by a particular house that was for sale for close to two years. As the months went by and the seasons passed, we often commented on the changes we noticed in the house and the yard, and how sad it was to see the house empty for so long.

In September of 2003, one of my nieces came to visit and we took a walk to the lake, choosing the same route my daughter and I took each morning. As we walked past the ‘for sale’ house, we noticed a moving van in the driveway and in the yard was evidence that a family was moving in – a basketball hoop, several assorted sized bikes, and some kids playing in the yard. I rather excitedly said to my niece, ‘The house got a family!” And INSTANTLY I knew this was going to be a book. That same evening, I wrote the first draft of the story, The House that Wanted a Family.

The House that Became THE House (title page)

The house in my book doesn’t look anything like the house that inspired my story. The house on the lake route was a rather large multi-level stone home and throughout the years as I tweaked and revised my words, I would sometimes doodle and sketch potential houses. The search for what ended up becoming ‘my house’ would take many months, or probably years, as well as many car and train rides. It seemed in every town or city that I visited, I developed a habit of scanning the neighborhoods and the streets looking for the perfect house. I would browse magazines and websites and I snapped lots of photos too. But nothing ever seemed to ‘speak to me.’ That is until I found the inspiration for my house in a neighborhood only blocks from my home, on a street I had taken dozens and dozens of times. Only I think that is another story, that will have to wait for another day.