Creativity Is a Weird Thing, or How a Hole in the Ground Became a Horror Sci-Fi Trilogy

Creativity is a weird thing. Here’s an example.

I wrote a novel and called it The Hole. It was about a giant sinkhole that opens in the West End of Vancouver, BC, and about how one family is drawn into the abyss. I mean, this hole was huge, big enough to swallow many towers, and made for an exciting action-adventure story. I wrote several drafts of this novel, refining the telling of the story as I went along. And then one day I thought I was ready to do a final polish, so I set the book aside to let it cool and went to work on my query letter and synopsis.

My intention was to connect with a literary agent keen on selling a disaster thriller. But in the process of crafting my query letter and coming up comp titles in both books and movies, I realized I couldn’t quite peg the story. I’d written it with the thought that the sinkhole itself as a sort of monster, but on my website and social media touted my creation as a disaster thriller – which it is, but what was the source of the disaster? It couldn’t be considered a natural disaster; yes, there are sinkholes in nature, but they don’t get to be a mile wide. I thought about making it somehow a man-made disaster, but with the novel already at 90,000 words, an ideal length, how long would the novel have to be to properly develop such a scenario? Even trying to sell the story as a fantasy knockoff demanded such development.

And then I realized that the one thing the sinkhole-as-monster concept needed was a monster.

Thus, was born EYELESS. Once the novel had a monster, suddenly the story resonated like a well-tuned guitar string and things really fell into place. So much so, that I am now working on THE WAKES, book two of what has become an apocalyptic horror trilogy replete with space travel.

Cool, huh?

Now don’t get me started on where I came up with the idea for the giant sinkhole to begin with…

(Photo by ameenfahmy.)