It happened pretty organically. I had a lot of strong feelings about things happening in our country, and I really didn’t have a healthy outlet for expressing those. So I kind of just started writing and poured it into this character and this parallel timeline story which allowed for more freedom and creativity. At some point a week or so into the process, I realized I was writing a novel and needed to get more organized and disciplined with the story. Where was it going? What was I wanting, or needing to say? Who were the characters and what was the plot to allow me to accomplish it all.

I wrote it very quickly. Absurdly fast. I think I had a 120,000-word draft in six weeks. I was obsessed, writing ten hour days until my mind was mush. I’ve read about the writing process of other writers, and I think 20,000 words per week is not normal. And not recommended! I didn’t know what I was doing and the words were pouring out of me, so I just kept writing. The editing process was a grind. I had to really learn literary punctuation for the first time. The subtle differences between the choice of a period or a comma or an em dash or an ellipsis are profound when you’re trying to pace a reader appropriately through a passage. I was naive to all that, but I was committed to learning it and applying it to create the very best version of the story as possible. In the end the whole process of writing and editing and pressing publish was about fifteen weeks. 

I wish I could remember the sequence exactly. Because of the story, I knew I had a John Doe who would need a new name. Kind of like Waylon said, I ain’t riding all the way to Salina with a nobody, I wasn’t riding all the way to the end of book with John Doe. So it created a great opportunity for a scene where the Sergeant and MalunaAI help him create a new identity. 

That part was definitely organic and just kind of inspired, I think, from my travels. The “center of the country” idea just clicked. Then as a child of the South, I really enjoy Asheville and knew that would be the kind of place to take a stand against AI. I’ve been familiar with the department at the University of Virginia for a long time. That was an easy next stop. And finally, I needed a remote place to hide a hideout and there aren’t many places more remote than northern Maine. And of course, that let me do a fun road trip for Jake across some beautiful country that I’ve traveled a couple of times. 

I love this question, because the characters feel like children to me. I guess all writers feel that way. One of my grandmothers was Aline. I didn’t give it much thought in the beginning. I just gave the sweet woman her name and never ended up changing it. I’d say there’s a part of me in all the other characters, except Waylon and Luther Caine. I can relate to all the others at a personal level. And then there are fictional characters from TV or movies that I can’t help but hear in my head for a few of the larger-than-life characters. Perhaps my favorite part of writing the book was capturing the dialogue for some of these high-stakes interactions between the characters. It’s a lot of fun to fully immerse myself in those moments and imagine what they’re feeling and what they’d say. 

A few things stand out. The passage on the Abenaki people in People of the Dawn was one of my favorite passages to write. I’ve always been drawn to the history and stories of Native Americans. In the little North Georgia town where I wrote the book, there’s a lot of Cherokee history. I would go and sit in a park alongside a spring where the Cherokee had a village for probably thousands of years. I sensed the ancestral spirits around me in that park. Like Jake, I would touch the old cedar trees along the bank of the spring. I was inspired to write the story of the Abenaki people living on the banks of Lowell Lake as a tribute of sorts to all First People. And figuring out Jake’s path home with the help of Ben Franklin was a blast to write. The final chapter of the book, probably unsurprisingly, is the most meaningful to me. The ending has parallels to other stories that are ingrained deeply. What could be more powerful? I do hope the final chapter speaks to others, but I was turned very inward as I wrote the final scene. Lastly, I was very attached to Jake and Evie’s story and had a lot of fun describing their drive down the mountain for their picnic: Evie’s tree lesson, touching the ancient Hemlock, seeing a Catamount, visiting the little spring, and then Evie’s musings on should we ever choose fear over love. As Jake realizes later in the book: All of it was beautiful. All of it was magic.

No. I had three distinct endings that I was debating in my mind until I was about three-quarters of the way through the book. Then suddenly I knew there was only one ending. When I came to that realization, I felt chill bumps kind of like Meryl and Jake describe in their scene together looking out on the valley. Those chill bumps were my sign that I’d made the right decision.

As I was writing Jake Doe, I really thought it was a one-book-and-done tale. But then I reached a point, about the same time when I confirmed the ending, that I realized it was a longer story. There’s a finality to Book 1, but there are also so many open questions, right? I wonder if readers will even pick up on all the little hidden mysteries left behind. Most importantly, as I told the story, in a lot of ways Evie emerged as the heart and soul of the book. She’s so smart and tough, but she’s not afraid to show you all her emotions. If Jake’s superpower is meditation, Evie’s is emotional vulnerability. She does live her life choosing love and the people around her respond to that. Book 2 will be titled, Evangeline Rising. I already have a name for Book 3 - the likely final book of the story - but I’m not disclosing that yet. 

I’ll try to avoid all the cliche responses and answer the question this way. Writing is the mechanical part of the process. It can be learned. I’m proof of that. The magic is in the imagination. I’d been subconsciously writing Jake Doe in my imagination for years. We all have at least one good story to tell. Don’t follow a formula. Don’t sit down to write. Sit down to imagine. Collect all those thoughts and ideas that are unique to your life, to your experience as a human. Package them up in some kind of really creative way that’s also unique to you. My creative vehicle was a fictional novel that involved time travel and multiverses and supernatural elements, but it all served to deliver my strong feelings and views about what’s happening politically in our country, in our society, today. I recognized, as I was writing and afterwards, that I had been influenced by certain writers over the years: Hemingway, Flannery O’Connor, Pat Conroy, John Irving, John Grisham, Stephen King, Yann Martel, and others. But I never consciously tried to emulate any of them. The story all flowed out of my imagination onto the page, sometimes awkwardly and sometimes beautifully. Don’t invest in your writing. Invest in your imagination. And have confidence that whatever is uniquely you, and important to you, is a story worth sharing.