RAGMAN

The minute I read about the Japanse game of Hitori Kakurenbo -- hide and seek with a demon! -- I knew I wanted to write a book about that. I struggled for months trying to come up with something, and in the end I had 3 very different, yet similar, stories. Someone plays the game, the demon is unleashed, mayhem follows. But there were distinct differences. One idea involved a child. Another a cop. In a third, a family was victimized by the demon. In the course of my research, I came across two facts: one, the demon is often considered the Japanese version of the boogeyman. And two, every culture has their own boogeyman legends. 

At some point, I had the brilliant (ha!) idea to combine all three stories and incorporate multiple boogeymen: the cuco (Puerto Rican), the oni (Japanese), and the American version.

Then I put the whole thing on the back burner while I worked on other projects. But now and then I'd go back to those notes and read them. And, as so often happens, one day, probably 2 years after I first had the idea, something clicked and I knew how to piece all 3 stories together. But I also thought it would be fun to do them as a trilogy of novellas instead of a single novel, something I'd never done before. And thankfully, LVP Publications liked it enough to publish it.

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