(there are literally times I sit down to write with no idea what will be written, and no-one is more surprised than I am when it shows up).

— Toirdhealbheach Beucail, in an aside in his New Year’s post.

In the first novel I published, The Imaginary Bomb, my two lead characters, Bob Whelan and Pete Wong, walked into a bar, where they got into an argument with a large, burly man named Baxter Hetznecker. I intended for Bob and Pete to detach th...