Story of the Story

The idea for Out Of Patience came from reading an interview with a writer who was returning to Minnesota to live in the small town he had grown up in. He recalled how, as a kid, he’d made a vow not to die in that little town, and now, here he was, returning to it. I thought, good idea for a story. A boy makes a vow not to die in the small town he wants to escape, but death and destruction threaten before he has a chance to grow up. But what would that threat be?

The notion for the threat came to me while visiting the British Museum and wandering into a room of 19th century majolica (dinnerware). A lot of the majolica was decorated with wild, imaginary beasts called “grotesques.” These “grotesques” have a cool origin. Back in the 1400s, Italian workmen discovered subterranean caves and rooms that turned out to be rooms in one of Emperor Nero’s palaces from the 1st century. The rooms were decorated with all sorts of fantastic animals, and became known as “grotesques” because the Italian word for cave or hollow is “grotto.” This notion of fantastic beasts locked underground, who were then discovered and let loose, gave me the idea for demons, or a curse, that might be blocked up in the first flush toilet west of the Mississippi.

Now I had an interesting character and jeopardy. From there, the story began to--you guessed it--flow.