Captain Quad

One of the questions I'm most frequently asked about writing is, "Where do you get your ideas?" In the case of Captain Quad, I actually have an answer. I'd finished the other two books and was firmly in the grip of a fear common to all writers: What next? Since I was writing horror, my first instinct was to select a theme that hadn't already been done to death. The out-of-body experience came to mind...but how scary is that? Maybe its very lack of horrific possibility explained why it hadn't been done to death. But the notion lingered.

Not long afterward I spotted a guy in the hospital lobby. He was scooting around in a motorized wheelchair and watching him, my first guess was that his previous ride of choice had been a Harley Davidson. He had the look: shaggy-headed, crude, jailhouse tattoos on his beefy arms, and a certain gleam in his eyes that suggested he knew something us nine-to-fivers hadn't figured out yet-and sure weren't going to learn from him. He wore a black T-shirt that fit him like a second skin; on it was a wear-faded, artist's rendering of a wildman quadraplegic piloting a winged wheelchair through outer space. The caption above, in oozing red letters, read CAPTAIN QUAD. And the story was born.

Oddly, my favorite parts of the novel are those in which the main character, Peter Gardner, learns the limits of his newfound power...