People ask me where the concept for my book, The Man with the Black Box, came from.  The answer is strange and perhaps a little disturbing.

In the summer of 2009 my family and I were visiting with my in-laws at their secluded home in the mountains of northwestern Colorado.  Their property, located several miles from the Wyoming border, was at 8200 feet in a lovely setting of pine, spruce, and aspen trees.  It was a perfect summer getaway from the Dallas heat.

One morning I woke up in a cold sweat, anxious and distressed.  In my head was a complete, vivid, and incredibly detailed dream.  A mysterious and evil man with a black box, which is how he was referred to in the dream, was at the center of it all.  Other characters, an inspector from Scotland Yard, a doctor in New York, the doctor’s young patient, the doctor’s wife, a second older doctor, and several other characters that I shouldn’t give away until you’ve read the book, all played roles in a strange drama that I could see clearly with my mind’s eye.

I hopped out of bed and grabbed a pen and yellow pad.  I’d experienced interesting dreams before that I enjoyed relating to my wife, but nothing with this kind of detail and specificity.  Also unusual, for me anyway, was the fact that neither I nor anyone I knew was in the dream.  It was if I had watched a movie unfold in my head.  I can never remember dreams for very long, and I was determined to memorialize this one.  For what purpose was not clear to me at the time.

I spent the next few hours ignoring my slowly waking family as I frantically scribbled out the dream on my yellow pad.  From beginning to end I chronicled as much as I could remember, making notes on what the characters looked like, writing down direct quotes, explaining the sounds, smells, and sights of the dream.

When I had finished the task later that day, I drew my family around (who were all quite curious by now about what I had been doing with my yellow pad) and explained what had happened.  I then read to them what I wrote down.

They all listened intently as I recounted the bizarre tale that was still vividly on my mind.  When I finished telling the story, even my normally unimpressed children seemed a little stunned.  “Dad, that is really weird.  You should write a book.”  To be honest, the thought had not occurred to me.  I just wanted to share with someone what I had experienced.  I had to tell someone.  I couldn’t let that frightening man and his black box dwell in my head without being able to talk to people about him and what he was doing.

At first I didn’t approach the task of writing it all down more completely as a book project. It was more a chance to capture something that I found extraordinary and interesting.  As the years went by I kept plugging away on it until at some point I convinced myself that what I was doing was indeed, writing a book.  It took me seven years, but in the end, that’s just what I did.