A Note About Inspiration.

Mohit Rajhan of Bollywood Blvd Show posed the question that most interviewers ask me often: "What inspired you to write this novel?" I seldom know how to accurately answer this particular question: What inspired me to write this novel the way I did? Did Garcia influence me in any way as I was in the midst of reading "One Hundred Years of Solitude" while working on completing this novel? Or was it just that one of my friend's challenged me to never start a novel by the phrase "it was a dark and stormy night..." as no one would then take me seriously as a writer -- which of course I decided to challenge in that very instant -- and began my novel with exactly that phrase. This question has always stumped me! Then I was reading "The White Tiger" by Aravind Adiga and it included the topics for discussion and interview with the author himself at the end of the book. He also discussed this question -- where did the inspiration for the main character come from? After reading his answer, I finally had mine. What inspired me to write this novel, among other reasons...Well, I see "blindness" all around me. Everyone of us live in some form of denial or assert our right to be "right." This blindness is a part of all of us. This is a character flaw yet also an essential survival tool for many of us. It's good and bad at the same time. Perhaps, this is what has mostly inspired me to write "The End of the Dark and Stormy Night" the way that I did.