Inspiration is a funny thing. It can come to us like a lightning bolt, through the lyrics of a song, or in the fog of a dream. Ask any writer where their stories come from and you’ll get a myriad of answers, and in that vein I created the WHAT (What the Hell Are you Thinking?) interview. 

Today’s guest for the WHAT is Chad Boudreaux, author of Scavenger Hunt which releases on January 31

Ideas for our books can come from just about anywhere, and sometimes even we can’t pinpoint exactly how or why. Did you have a specific origin point for your book?

The specific origin point for my novel Scavenger Hunt is a hidden eighth floor of the Main Justice Building in Washington, D.C. Main Justice is headquarters for many of the top U.S. lawyers, including the U.S. Attorney General and U.S. Solicitor General. The elevators at Main Justice, however, only reach the seventh floor. But there are eight sets of windows. That seemed strange to me back in 2002, when I started work there, so I conducted research on the building and unearthed no clues. Coming up short, I sought out a man who’d worked at Main Justice for several decades—a silver-haired institutionalist—and he told me that, before they built the FBI building (across the street), the eighth floor had served as the old FBI ballistics lab. He said there was a secret staircase that led to the eighth floor, which was now more of a utility floor. Mesmerized by this news, I grabbed a custodian with access to the staircase, a flashlight, and a notepad and ventured to the hidden floor. Many of the notes I doodled on that notepad are now in Chapter Two of Scavenger Hunt.

Once the original concept existed, how did you build a plot around it?

I figured the secret eighth floor at the Justice Department would provide the perfect meeting place for a clandestine, illegal operation staffed by amazing counterterrorism operatives from disparate agencies. The group consists of a Rambo-like figure from Delta Force, a former CIA operative with a questionable past, and a beautiful and stealth woman—a shadow—from NSA. All that remained was placing my all-star group in a theatre of unimaginable danger facing unspeakable tragedy. Beyond that, I introduced the real-life tensions inherent with combatting terrorism in a constitutional republic underpinned with strong individual rights. Readers will find that, throughout the story, I take them to cool spots in the Nation’s capital and pull back the curtain a bit on how things work in the mysterious U.S. intelligence, legal, and law enforcement communities. All that rounds out a plot that, if I’ve done my job, provides the platform for an entertaining, unforgettable story. 

Have you ever had the plot firmly in place, only to find it changing as the story moved from your mind to paper?

My mischievous characters do whatever they can to turn my original outline on its head. I will have a story plotted in my brain, but I rarely can predict how my characters will respond when I place them in theater, trap them in a box, and tell them to escape from the box. Stephen King mentions this phenomenon in his classic book On Writing, and when I first read it, I rolled my eyes at the thought of characters having minds of their own. But now I know that great characters will surprise you, and sometimes you must let them do their own thing, even if that means changing the story. My protagonist in Scavenger Hunt, Blake Hudson, is a fairly composed young man . . . or so I thought until someone messed with his four-legged best friend. I’m still shocked at how Blake responded to certain events in the book, and his actions when left unsupervised changed the novel’s trajectory and ending.   

Do story ideas come to you often, or is fresh material hard to come by?

Presently, I have five stories in my head. Story ideas come easy, putting them on the shelf is hard. Great stories will haunt you if you don’t tell them, so eventually authors must memorialize, nurture, and finish them. Many of my story ideas come while exercising and listening to fast-paced music. One of my recommendations to writers of fiction who struggle with finding and holding stories is to assign sticky titles to bubbling ideas. For instance, I had an idea recently for a story that was vague and ephemeral. I assigned it a title: The Puppeteer. Because I gave the idea a title, my mind had a solid reference point to revisit, and now it’s developing into a compelling story.  

How do you choose which story to write next, if you’ve got more than one percolating?

I suspect there is some business savvy inherent in prioritizing stories. My artsy answer is that the next story in the queue knocks the loudest. For example, I plan to write more novels in the Scavenger Hunt series, and many ask if my second novel is a sequel. It’s not. My second novel will be a thriller outside the series. I’m not sure if that makes the best business sense, but—although I desire to sell a ton of books—I’m not writing novels for fame or money, and I had to write that non-sequel thriller next. It just kept knocking, knocking, knocking loudly—driving me mad!

I have 6 cats and a Dalmatian (seriously, check my Instagram feed) and I usually have at least one or two snuggling with me when I write. Do you have a writing buddy, or do you find it distracting?

My writing buddy for Scavenger Hunt was my bestie and the only real character in the novel: my Great Dane, Judge. Judge died of cancer several years ago, and his death broke my heart into pieces. I haven’t mustered the courage to adopt or buy another dog, so Eddie Vedder and Pearl Jam remain my primary writing buddies.

Before becoming Executive Vice President & Chief Legal Officer of the nation’s largest military shipbuilder, Chad Boudreaux served as Deputy Chief of Staff for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, where he advised Secretary Michael Chertoff on almost all significant matters facing the newly established department.  Before working for Homeland Security, Boudreaux served in several high-ranking positions at the U.S. Justice Department, where he was hired the night before the September 11, 2001 attacks. During his time at the Justice Department, Boudreaux focused most of his time on matters relating to terrorism and homeland security.  Boudreaux graduated from Baylor University in Texas in 1995 and from the University of Memphis School of Law in 1998, where he was Managing Editor of the law review.