Although I've lived in Southern California for decades, I was born and raised in New York City. That may explain why the idea for First Second Coming, my debut novel, hatched on 9/11 as I watched the World Trade Center fall.

I'd been in the building often. My law firm conducted seminars there every May and I had clients in the building. Some of them were lost. Horrified by what I was seeing on CNN, a random thought came to me: "We need a new god. A planetary turnaround specialist."

Random thoughts come and go, but this one didn't budge. In 2015, soon after I decided to write fiction as a retirement hobby, that random thought from 9/11 made itself known again. In one sitting a rudimentary plot, the names and histories of the two main characters and three different story endings spilled out.

I made a bullet point outline and began to write whenever I could. First Second Coming was the result.