Goodreads asked Dan Burns:

Where did you get the idea for your most recent book?

Dan Burns People often ask me how I came up with a certain idea or why I decided to write a particular story. Those are tough questions to answer. All I can say is that ideas come, at any time of the day or night, and it is usually something I saw or read or heard that inspired them. The ideas come, and when they do, it is prudent for me to jot them down so I do not forget them. I realize there is a reason the ideas come to me, and it is not up to me to judge the source. However, it is up to me to trust the source, because the ideas germinate from the combined experiences of my lifetime. The ideas are me. I think it is true that I do not have a say in which stories I write. I do not write a story because I think it will lead to fame or fortune. I write a story because I have to, because the idea nags at me and will not leave me alone until the words are down onto the page and the story is finished.

I wrote the stories for my most recent book, No Turning Back, over a period of six years, from August 2006 to September 2012. I took the title for the book from the final story in the collection. No Turning Back is actually the first story I wrote, and the story is about a man put in a predicament where the only option is to jump forward, into the unknown and on to whatever comes next. I had no prior intention, but as I was pulling together the stories for this book, it was clear to me that all of the stories were linked by a similar theme: that every day we come to a crossroads in life and going back the way we came is not an option. No Turning Back is not only a fitting title for the book, but it also provides a sound mantra for living our lives: don’t try to re-live the past, for the future has so much in store for us. Just keep moving forward.

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