Some random stuff about the book.  Just to warn you, there are some spoilers.  Some of them major.

 

The Book:

  • I started Mill Creek around the spring of 2003, but I had the idea floating around in my head about a year or two prior to that. The book was released on August 25, 2008. There are several reasons why it took so long. I got divorced, bought a PlayStation 2, tried to be a dad as much as I could (or was allowed to), switched jobs & moved to another state, got into a relationship, got out of a relationship, bought a PlayStation 3, and made a half-assed attempt to get the book “properly” published. To be honest, though, some days I just didn’t feel like working on it. It was a hobby, something to do in my spare time when I didn’t have my son with me.  And I've never had plans to quit my day job.
  • Mill Creek was the third title. The original title is a spoiler, so I’ll save that for later. For years it was called Dead Harvest, right up until July ’08. My original proof copies have that as the title and I even bought a domain with that title in it. At the last minute, though, I decided that it was too much of a horror title and I didn’t want the book to be pigeonholed into that genre. If you read the book (please), you’ll see horror elements in it, but I don’t think it’s a horror book. If it is, it’s probably not a very good one. Or maybe it is. I’m not that big of a horror fan, so I couldn’t tell you one way or the other.
  • Except for my sister-in-law helping proof the final draft, I did everything myself, including the cover photo. Hopefully it’s not too obvious that it’s chocolate frosting and Hershey’s syrup. I tried using actual mud, but it looked awful. If you look really close, you can see the edge of the pan in the lower right corner. Other than the fact that I accidentally gave mud-man a nose when I spread the frosting, I’m really happy with the way it turned out.
  • I was also my own editor, and it shows.  There's a few typos or what-not that I never fixed, and things I wish I could've done or written differently, but in the end I'm just happy to have had the balls to finish it and put it out there.  An English major would probably look at this book the same way a music major looks at a NOFX album.  I can live with that.

 Prologue

  • With one exception, I wrote MC in chronological order. I don’t know if other people skip around, but I didn’t like doing that. I usually have the main plot points down before I start, so if I’m not sure how to get from A to B I just take a break and think it over. It’s not like I have to worry about deadlines. Anyway, the prologue is pretty much the same now as it was when I first wrote it. I’ve read it many, many times and never thought it sucked (even when I noticed my opening was similar to Snoopy’s “dark and stormy night"), which I took as a good sign.
  • I grew up in Rockingham County, near Reidsville. Mill Creek is in Reid County, near Rockville. It’s very cheesy, but the names grew on me, so I kept them.
  • I just made the name Mill Creek up, though I wasn’t surprised to learn that there are towns and apartment complexes with that name. I was just trying to find a name that sounded rural.
  • Mill Creek is largely based on a township in Rockingham County known as Bethany, where my mom currently lives.

Chapters 1 & 2

  • Eric’s initial back-story was that he was a computer programmer that became independently wealthy after developing a popular program to fix the Y2K bug, but I quickly changed my mind because I thought it would make the story too dated, too quickly. Seeing as how the book didn’t get released until 2008, it was probably the right move.
  • The mud-man was never meant to be a central character, much less my cover boy. I was just trying to come up with something goofy for Eric’s dream.
  • Eric’s opinion on pills and psychiatry stems from my own personal experience with them following my divorce. If they work for you great, but all it did for me was make me feel worse.
  • Many of the last names are common back in Rockingham County, including Casey’s, though back home it’s usually spelled “McCollumn.” Not sure why I drop the n.
  • Casey is based on a couple of people I know from Bethany.
  • The only place where Dark-man, as I would often think of him (no relation to the Sam Rami movie) gets his own chapter. It might have worked better to put him at the end of Chapter 1, like I did everywhere else. Maybe not. Guess it really doesn’t matter.

Chapter 3

  • There were actually a couple of things from this part of the book that I started writing, but got cut. One was a flashback of Eric right after Karen’s death where he tries to escape his pain by running off to Detroit to see the Tigers play one of their last games in Tiger Stadium, then coming close to killing himself in his hotel room when it didn’t work. Not only did it get cut because of pacing, but it would have dated the book too much.
  • The other “deleted scene” was another flashback featuring Eddie’s dad, but it hurt the pacing of the story. It all got whittled down to a half page blurb, which nearly got cut as well, but I decided that something needed to intro Eddie’s place.
  • Eddie’s is based on a similar place in Bethany called Moore’s
  • I’d like to go back and do a prequel that’s set in the period of Eddie’s dad and Eric’s grandfather, which I kind of set up here, but we'll see. Maybe after I finish Book Two, but who knows when that’ll happen.
  • Most people will assume that Eddie and his son are the only black people in the book and that everyone else is white, but I never say that’s the case. That was deliberate. Make ‘em any race you want. Does it really matter?

Chapters 4 & 5

  • Tom Jenning has the same first name as my step-dad, but that didn’t occur to me until I named his wife Jo Ann after my mom, Joan (which was intentional).
  • Whenever the story’s told from the sheriff’s perspective I refer to him as Tom.  When it’s from Eric’s POV I call him “Sheriff Jenning.”
  • This part originally ended with Tom addressing the guys at the diner, but I couldn’t get it to work, so I just quit after he and Eric pulled into the parking lot.

Chapters 6 & 7

  • Towards the end I thought about going back and putting Eddie in the scene with Eric and Casey, but I was so close to wrapping the book up that I didn’t feel like rewriting it. Sometimes I wish I had.
  • I don’t actually know anyone that says “hush” like Ruth does, but I thought it would be cute to have her say it all the time.
  • A few people from my former life that used to piss me off on a regular basis inspired the character of Brent Johnson. He wasn’t always in the book and at first I didn’t think he’d actually stay in it, but he ended up working out pretty well as I started fine-tuning the ending.
  • I once dated someone who loved the show Dr. G: Medical Examiner, which was the inspiration for Dr. B. I pulled the name Balakumaran out of the phone book. The same girlfriend had a son named R.J. and I liked the idea of having a character that went by initials.

Chapters 8-10

  • When I was coming up with the name of Eric’s former employer I hadn’t heard of Naughty Dog. I was never a big Jak and Daxter fan, but the Uncharted series is now one of my favorites. The name Metal Fist, on the other hand, was named after the Metal Gear franchise (another personal favorite).
  • As I’ve said before, I worried about the story becoming dated too quickly, so I make a point of not mentioning any gaming console or handheld by name. Of course, the first scene with Dawn was probably dated before the book even came out. There’s no reason for her dad to have to hand her the phone. She'd have her own cell phone with her. She wouldn’t even need to hear it ring. It would vibrate. I should’ve rewritten it, but I liked that little moment between Dawn and her dad too much to take it out.
  • I didn’t tell much of Tara’s back-story, other than hints here and there, because it seemed to get in the way. Besides, I never really saw a need to go into a lot of character development with anyone other than Eric. It’s not really that kind of story.
  • When people get to Chapter 10, I wonder how many people actually remember that Chapter 5 was called Finding Paul.
  • I grew up on County Home Road.
  • I’ve had friends and relatives accuse me of cursing too much in the book. Personally I don’t think my characters curse any more than the average person would, expecially when placed in similar situations. Eric’s first words to Dawn are a good example.
  • I also wonder how many people were able to figure out what killed Paul and Micah before the big reveal at the end of Part 2. It just happened to work out where it came about a third of the way through the book, which seems like a good place to have it. I’m sure some have the same reaction as Eric’s, which is why he says what he does to end the chapter.

Chapters 11 & 12

  • I’ve never seen a bobblehead like the one Tom has, but I’d bet money it exist.
  • Tim originally referenced Cujo, not Jaws (and the chapter ended with Charlie asking, “What’s a Cujo?”). This stemmed from my occasional worries that the whole story would only be thought of as a cheap King knock-off. Then I decided that, if anything, it was a cheap Jaws knock-off, then I finally remembered all the old fifties movies like Them! and stopped fretting so much about it. The “Simpsons did it” episode of South Park helped a lot, too.
  • When I was in grad school, if another research group published a paper on work you were doing (effectively killing your chances of getting your own work published), we’d say you got “scooped.” It took me so long to write Mill Creek that I would often worry about getting scooped, especially considering the simple premise behind the main story line. In fact, soon after I started working on the book, I walked by a Waldenbooks and nearly had a heart attack from the cover of Stephen King’s recently released Dreamcatcher. Lucky for me, it was actually a story about aliens. 
  • Still, at one point it looked like there was going to be another revival of the “monster animal” genre in movies. There was one about a killer grizzly (Grizzly Park), this New Zealand flick about killer sheep (whose name escapes me), Steve Alten’s novel Meg looked like it was going to hit the big screen, and several movies about killer snakes, but no killer bucks. I can’t decide if that means my idea was original or if the premise was so bad it wasn't even good enough for SyFy.

Chapters 13-15

  • I didn’t organize the chapters until the very end.  The two halves of Chapter 13 were originally separate chapters/sections.  I think combining the two worked out pretty well.  They compliment each other in a nice way.
  • Originally, Eric was going through a box of photos he pulled from his closet, but I decided to modernize it a little.
  • Eric talks to himself too much, but so do I.
  • I’ve been on a few deer drives in my life. It almost feels like cheating.
  • The title of Chapter 15 was my original title of the book. I decided very early on to change it because I thought it worked better to keep the identity of Paul’s killer a mystery until the reveal in Eric's living room. Besides, the book isn’t just about a killer buck. Hopefully people who read it all the way to the end agree.
  • I tried keeping a notebook for jotting down ideas, but other than a rough map of Mill Creek I never used it much (I’m doing it a lot more with Book 2, though). I did use it to sketch out Eric’s encounter with the buck, though.
  • Another reason I did a Jaws reference in Chapter 12 instead of Cujo was I already had Eric doing the “bigger boat” line at the end of 15.  It gave me an excuse for having Eric do the quote.

Chapter 16 & 17

  • I mention that Andy Griffith is the lead-in show for Channel 2’s six o’clock news.  That’s actually true and has been so as long as I can remember.  Think about it – a forty year old TV show in what’s arguably the most important time slot for a local network.  Not a talk show or a Judge Whoever show.  Andy freakin’ Griffith.  Central NC’s obsession with that man boggles my mind, sometimes.
  • I was hoping no one else had thought of the name “Bandora’s Pox,” but a quick Google search showed otherwise.  Still, I liked it enough to keep it as the name of the computer virus.  If I ever finish Book 2, you’ll meet the guy that wrote it.
  • Eric’s working on a game called Black Void.  As of this writing, there’s a video game coming out called Dark Void.  For the record, I came up with my name before the later was ever announced.

Chapters 18-20

  • Since the Cujo reference got cut, I thought I’d name-drop the King at the beginning of Chapter 18.
  • I don’t know how accurate all of the police and Wildlife office stuff is.  Never really thought it mattered, to be honest, so long as it sounded good.
  • For the record, I’ve never imagined R. Lee Ermey — or anyone, for that matter — as Tom (in my mind, Tom was as lot bigger).  I was just trying to come up with someone most people would know.
  • The late Richard Jeni had a great bit on the absurdity of Jaws 4.
  • I had an idea of the buck attacking a pair of guys spotlighting at night, but I could never flesh it out.
  • Tara’s drink of choice is rum and coke, same as my brother.
  • You haven’t seen a night sky until you’ve been out in the country.
  • A lot of my chapter titles lift lines from the chapter itself, as the case with chapter 20.  I like doing that.  It’s like naming a song after one of the verses.
  • I like to think chapter 20’s a good one to read again after finishing the book.  I was going to put a red herring in here about Dark Man’s identity, but I changed my mind.  Then again, maybe I ended up putting one in anyway.  Depends on who you think he is by this point, I guess.

Chapters 21-23

  • I put Adam in the diner to give Eddie and Charlie some extra scene time.  It also shows that the deputies and people of Mill Creek are actually interacting with one another.
  • Lee Joyce is named after my brother and his wife.
  • Chapter 21 is the one that contains the inspiration for the entire book.  Back when I tried my hand at hunting, I was sitting in a tree stand, seeing absolutely nothing, when the thought popped in my head that a buck was actually watching me and waiting for me to start climbing down so it could take a stab at me. 
  • If I’m proud of anything, it’s the way I present the first three attacks.  Paul’s is the only one that’s told in the moment, Micah’s isn’t really described in any detail, only in bits and pieces that the reader has to put together, and Lee’s is done after the fact through video.
  • On the flip side, finding different nightmares for Eric, where to put them and how long to make them was a pain in the ass.  I think I did alright, but I could have probably done better.
  • I was going to go into Eric’s computer set-up and how he was able work on console games from home, but I figure most people reading this wouldn’t know what a dev kit was and decided not to bother.
  • At first, I didn’t notice that Lee’s attack was almost identical to Paul’s, but when I did I liked it and had Tom point it out.  It’s methodical, like any other wild animal attacking it’s prey.
  • Tom’s confrontation with Brent is one of my favorites.  Brent is clearly shown as a complete tool, but holds his own against Tom. Like the prologue, I’ve read it many times and never thought it sucked.

Chapter 24 & 25

  • I wonder how many people get the connection between chapters 22 and 24, their titles in particular.
  • I could’ve done more with early part of Dean’s section.  I didn’t do a good job describing the chaos that was occurring in Mill Creek after Brent leaked the video.
  • If you got the Alex, Kevin, and Totally Rad references, God bless you.
  • Tara and Eric have sex on the third date, which I believe frees either one from being labeled as sluts.
  • Jamie’s abduction was one of the very first ideas I had going into the book, but originally he was the only one to get kidnapped because Dark Man mistook him for a girl, which was why I named him Jamie.  Early on, he was going to be a lot more effeminate, but as I started to fine tune how I was going to end the book I decided it would work better if Jamie’s kidnapping was unintentional (more on that later).
  • I’ve never been ice-skating.  In my defense, I grew up in the South and the closet rink was 20-30 miles away in Greensboro.
  • R.J. was originally on the bridge with Tom, but I decided it worked better if Tom was alone.
  • Tom’s thought about feeling like “a little fish at the end of a great big hook” was a line I lifted from The Crow, though the exact quote is “I feel like a little worm on a big fuckin' hook.”  I didn’t change “worm” to “fish” intentionally, though.  I just fucked the line up and never realized it (until this very moment, actually).  Lucky for me people fish with minnows, so the line still makes sense.

Chapters 26 & 27

  • Having Jamie blindfolded through all of 26 turned out to be a nice way to avoid getting too graphic towards the end.
  • Ch. 27 might have my least favorite chapter title.  I had trouble with that one for some reason.
  • When Eric drinks his juice, I wonder how many people get this little call back to Ch. 1.
  • I also wonder how many people “get” the conversation between Eric and Jerry.

Chapters 28-30

  • The book probably isn’t long enough to be divided into six parts.  I considered not sectioning it off into parts at all, but once I had it organized into chapters, it turned out that every five chapters was its own little slice of the overall story and I really likec how each section ended.  Back when the title was Dead Harvest, my original idea was to split it into three titled sections: Seed (1-10), Growth (10-20), and Harvest (21-30), but even before the name change I decided that was a bit cheesy.
  • I came really close to titling Ch. 28 “Drawing of the Three,” but decided not to.  Between the earlier King reference and the Jaws stuff, among others, I figure I’d already reached my homage quota.  Instead, I inadvertently ended up naming it after a dirty cartoon on Comedy Central.
  • I wish I could say that the whole “Dig it” bullshit was always intended to be a lead up to Eric digging up the grave, but it wasn’t.  Unless it was subconscious (given the number of lucky breaks I had, sometime I wonder…)
  • Back when Jamie was the only one to get abducted, he was going to be the one in the grave.  I came really close to killing him off anyway, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it.  I liked the kid too much.  Besides, I’d killed enough people by this point.
  • People who want to quip about how fast Eric can dig or how fast a grave can fill with water can piss off.  If you’ve hung with me this far, you can throw me a freakin’ bone.
  • I didn’t mean to keep Barbara Yates out the story until now.  I just meant for her to be a bit introverted, a homebody that, other than looking after her husband, kept to herself.  In hindsight, I should’ve at least told that through one of the Dark Man moments.  Oh, well.
  • The one chapter I wrote out of sequence was 29.  I think I was still working on Ch. 10 when I decided to jump ahead.  I can’t remember why I did, but I’m glad I did.  It gave me something to work towards, like a finish line (even though there was one chapter to go).  When I finally got to it, I revised it a little, but not much.
  • Back when the book was called Dead Harvest, I thought it would be neat to make the last chapter the same title as the book   Now that it’s called Mill Creek, I guess it’s just a little nod to that old title.
  • I came up with Tom’s “harvesting the dead” line after deciding to call the book Dead Harvest.
  • I’m jumping around in the timeline because I wanted a moment where the reader thought that Eric had died.  I actually consider killing him, but it didn’t seem right (and like I said before, I’d killed enough people by this point).
  • Yes, that’s an X-files reference.
  • Eric’s dream was the last thing I wrote for the book.  I decided I needed one last, little moment of closure for Eric.  And for the buck.
  • I kind of shoehorned Eric’s family into the chapter because I figured it only made sense that they would show up, but I didn’t want to bother introducing three more characters as I was nearing the end and didn’t feel it necessary to have them show up earlier in the book just so they could play a bigger role in the last chapter.

Epilogue

  • My original idea was to have Eric and Tara at Karen’s grave, but changing it to the two of them getting Jamie’s room ready ends the story on a more upbeat note.  I think, anyway.  I also considered having the three of them move to Atlanta, which is why I had Jeff make the offer earlier.
  • I think the Zip drive reference is funnier now than it was when I wrote it several years ago.
  • That picture, as well as the trunk, really exists, for reasons given by Tara.