Ask the Author: Scott McCord
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Scott McCord
I had written two literary novels, The Bones of Boulder Creek and The Gospel of Jesse. Both novels were fairly well received and I was ready to start my third, when my eleven-year-old daughter asked me to write something different. She wanted something with a little more action, something post-apocalyptic, perhaps dystopian. We were at her little sister’s soccer match when my eleven-year-old made the suggestion to which I said I would never be interested in writing that type of story unless I could come up with an original idea. I did not want to repackage what someone else had already done. But not wanting to be totally dismissive of my little girl, I decided to let my mind wander and at least come up with something for us to talk about.
When the soccer match hit half-time, my daughter and I walked to the concession stand for a Coke and a bag of bubble gum. By the time we got there, we’d already worked a premise where there was no oxygen left in the world except for this one giant air pocket that slid over the earth’s surface with the last remnant humankind living inside having to move with it. This presented all manner of difficulties, giving rise to a low-tech, nomadic people who were at the mercy of wherever the air pocket (Brother Ark) decided to stop. But context isn’t enough for a story, so making our way back to my youngest daughter’s match, weaving among the fields of brightly colored youth soccer players running about with parents cheering and banners waving, we devised another game—part soccer and part football to be played in an arena around an open pit. We named it, dangerball. I was doing most of the talking while my daughter was doing a lot of nodding and smiling. After my eleven-year-old asked me to write a more interesting story, the whole idea was noodled out in less than ten minutes.
Still, I wasn’t sure I wanted to write the story and my wife was openly skeptical about the whole thing, but I had a couple of open mornings, so I decided to take the idea for a test run. Three or four chapters later, I found genre fiction to be a lot more difficult than I thought. I was ready to be done and go back to something more comfortable. That’s when my most strident critic, the one I fear most of all, picked up my work in progress, and… loved it. My wife’s skepticism had taken a complete 180 and she was eager for me to finish. So I did…and had a great time doing it.
When the soccer match hit half-time, my daughter and I walked to the concession stand for a Coke and a bag of bubble gum. By the time we got there, we’d already worked a premise where there was no oxygen left in the world except for this one giant air pocket that slid over the earth’s surface with the last remnant humankind living inside having to move with it. This presented all manner of difficulties, giving rise to a low-tech, nomadic people who were at the mercy of wherever the air pocket (Brother Ark) decided to stop. But context isn’t enough for a story, so making our way back to my youngest daughter’s match, weaving among the fields of brightly colored youth soccer players running about with parents cheering and banners waving, we devised another game—part soccer and part football to be played in an arena around an open pit. We named it, dangerball. I was doing most of the talking while my daughter was doing a lot of nodding and smiling. After my eleven-year-old asked me to write a more interesting story, the whole idea was noodled out in less than ten minutes.
Still, I wasn’t sure I wanted to write the story and my wife was openly skeptical about the whole thing, but I had a couple of open mornings, so I decided to take the idea for a test run. Three or four chapters later, I found genre fiction to be a lot more difficult than I thought. I was ready to be done and go back to something more comfortable. That’s when my most strident critic, the one I fear most of all, picked up my work in progress, and… loved it. My wife’s skepticism had taken a complete 180 and she was eager for me to finish. So I did…and had a great time doing it.
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