Christyanna asked Michael Grant:

What inspired you to write the book gone?

Michael Grant Here's a long and probably odd answer. I don't think in terms of inspiration, I think in terms of problem-solving.

Imagine a thousand Legos of various shapes and colors each representing a character or a story line. Many of those bricks have been used - they're tropes or cliches; some of them are characters I've seen before, or too-familiar bits of dialog. I need to build a structure without a plan, while avoiding all those bad bricks, and have the end result look like nothing you've ever seen before.

Sometimes an initial idea will just pop into my head almost fully-formed. GONE did. Other times I may go in search of an idea. BZRK started with the question, "What's a new 'scary' that people haven't seen?" But as always the initial idea is just a tiny part of the whole, because on every page you may be tempted to reach for one of those bad bricks, and you need to resist that temptation and find a different way, a way unique to you. The initial idea is followed by hundreds of ideas needed to implement the one, big idea.

To me the underlying trick is to sound like yourself and no one else. That's called 'voice.' The world doesn't need another this or another that, it may well need a specific you. Figure out who you are and you start to figure out your voice. How's that for some psychobabble?

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