If you're going to write novels, you always have a choice. You can be focused and straightforward, realistic, formulaic, and follow the rules. Or you can try to juggle lots of weird ideas and implications about life that may or may not actually be grounded in reality.
The first inspiration for my novel Sound Effect Infinity came because I was transfixed by loud guitar music played by everyone from The Grateful Dead, Cream, Hot Tuna, Jimi Hendrix, Santana, and Led Zeppelin. I couldn't believe what I was hearing. I still can't.
I was also deeply saddened to know that so many great musicians die at young ages.
It was the 1970s. A lot more was coming at me than the effect of the sound of music. We learned in those days about secret CIA and Defense Department research into what was called paranormal activities — things like mind control, remote viewing, telekinesis, and various types of ESP. We also learned about the crazy experiments and tests they were running connected to psychedelic drugs on whole unsuspecting populations as well as on willing test subjects.
All of that at a time just after Richard Nixon and the Republican Party began their war on drugs. I also read Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged back then which, while I understood and partially disagreed with the politics of her story, was quite intriguing because the heart of the plot was a secret, hidden community of gifted thinkers who believed in the freedom to create what they knew was right in their chosen fields.
Something else started up in the '70s and continues even now: all the myths about ghosts and secret sightings of Elvis, John Lennon, and The Doors' frontman Jim Morrison.
Rock 'n' roll and The Blues had always thrown out stories in that vein. The most famous of them was about Robert Johnson selling his soul in order to become a guitar god down at the crossroads in Clarksdale, Mississippi, at the intersection of U.S. Route 61 and U.S. Route 49. Tales are still out there about Jimi Hendrix himself attempting the same feat at that same crossroads during his supposed "lost" years.
I knew I wanted somehow to meld all of those issues into a story that would take place in the Central Missouri countryside. In the late 1980s I read a newspaper article about Midwestern migration and how what they were calling "flyover country" was slowly losing its rural center, with young and old alike moving to cities all over the country. That was an era affected by Mel Gibson's Mad Max and The Road Warrior. So, what would happen if most of the good and at least semi-normal people cleared out of the center of this country? What mysteries might sprout up or be left behind?
And finally, what if two blended-heritage, mixed-race loners joined forces and tried to make sense of all of that stuff? Lincoln Koufax grew up in Columbia, Missouri, an adopted bi-racial music journalism genius. Juanita "Carbie" Carbajal grew up in Columbia too, but had some lost years hard to remember until she came home and became a police cadet right as the Drift Away was kicking in and life was about to get weird all over.
So how does all of that connect and meld together? A tough challenge. Why I took it on can only be understood by reading the book.
Thanks for reading.