I jumped the median and made it home in a little under an hour, my gas gauge floating just above ‘E’. The highways were clogged with cars that had long since run out of gas every minimart and gas station had been picked clean. After five hours on the road, we’d made it all of sixty miles. Apparently, about a million other people had the same idea. But one memory that stands out is the night my family and I tried to flee Houston in advance of hurricane Rita. So many influences, real and imagined, went into The Passage that I couldn’t list them if I tried. I know I’m done when my mind feels as empty as a leaky bucket. When I write a novel, my goal is to put absolutely everything I have into its pages, right down to the interesting thing that happened yesterday. So don’t ever think you shouldn’t listen to your kids.īut my daughter’s challenge wasn’t the only inspiration. I put that book aside, wrote the first chapter of The Passage, and never looked back. As the weeks passed, I realized we were onto something much better than the book I was supposed to be writing. For the next three months she joined me on my daily jog, following along on her bicycle, while the two of us hashed out the plot. Many people know that The Passage was born from a challenge laid down by my eight-year-old daughter to write the story of “a girl who saves the world.” This wasn’t exactly what I wanted to hear-it seemed a trifle ambitious-but a dare is a dare. The better question would be: Where don’t I? An Exclusive Essay by Author Justin Cronin
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