The History of 'Found'

As it's written in the acknowledgements section of the book, the idea for 'Found' came to me on a drive home from vacation with my wife. It was sometime in 2007 when I wondered "What if someone, one day, just decided they needed a do-over in life? What would happen if they just left everything they knew for the unknown?" The idea was born, but I was just hitting the road on this journey to publication, which would turn out to be longer and more improbable than I ever expected.

Could I even write a book? I had no idea. But I had ideas about the book so I figured I needed to try.

I wrote on-and-off for a few months back in '07, getting about eight chapters in and feeling good about the story. I was doing the best I could with it while balancing a full-time radio job. Sometimes I'd write a few pages late at night, sometimes during the day. It was all going well. Then my mom got sick. Life changed. My wife got pregnant. Life changed again. My mom passed away near the end of 2008, and we had our daughter two weeks after. Less than a year later, we lost my wife's mother. I was consumed with other priorities for awhile, and completely screwed up. The book hit the back-burner.

I always knew I would get back to it, I just didn't know when. That day didn't come until the summer of 2010, when I sat down and opened up the computer document that held the first fifty or so pages. Writing went as it did before - steady, a few pages at a time. Then I got to an impasse. I knew how I wanted to end the book, I was just stuck at how to get there.

Then I got an idea. Of course! This is what has to happen! (To avoid spoilers here, if you read the book and then want to know what that plot point turned out to be, e-mail me and I'll tell you.) Once I got there, the rest of the book flowed out of the ketchup bottle. I think I wrote the next few chapters in about a month, and then another month or two for the remainder of the book. It was done. Published or not published, I wrote a book!

I was lucky enough to make contacts with a couple of terrific writers and agents, who helped me along the way, and through a separate coincidence, to MaxQ Publishing, who decided to take a chance on this story. If you decide to buy the book, I hope you enjoy it, and it makes you think, laugh and daydream. If you don't, that's OK too. I'm just glad you read this blog post to the end.

Sometimes it's the little triumphs in life that keep us going.

- Jason.