The Long Road to Writing Subterrania

I used to wonder how authors came up with their story ideas. How do you take a single thought and stretch it into hundreds of pages? I never imagined I’d find my own answer in the Las Vegas airport, staring down the dark mouth of an underground tunnel.

I can’t speak for every author, but for me, inspiration usually begins as a seed planted deep in my mind. The idea starts far removed from the final story and grows the more I think about it.

Subterrania is a perfect example. I remember the exact moment the seed was planted. My wife and I were in the Las Vegas airport, boarding one of the underground transport trains. We stood at the very front, where the tunnel stretched out ahead with no driver in sight.

I don’t remember why we were there or where we were headed, but I remember staring down that tunnel and feeling chills. My mind took off: What if this was all humans ever saw? Are these trains safe? How did they engineer this?

As those questions fired through my head, I noticed a little boy pressing his face to the glass, mouth open, eyes wide. Clearly, I wasn’t the only one fascinated.

Right then and there, I wrote down that I wanted to write a story about underground trains. I shared it with my wife, and she smiled and said, “Do it.”

Several months passed, and the idea grew piece by piece. I didn’t write it right away. I revisited it now and then, but it wasn’t until I gave myself a challenge—to write 5,000 words a day for a month—that I finally committed.

That challenge was brutal. I spent hours each day at my computer. Sometimes the words came easily; other times I sat banging my head, desperate for ideas. Even when I was sick or busy, I pushed through. A few times, I even cried from sheer exhaustion.

I failed the challenge, technically—but not before writing more than 140,000 words. I didn’t make it the full month, but I came close. Close enough to give me everything but an ending. Fortunately, I found the time soon after to finish.

That first draft was decent, but riddled with errors, plot holes, and weak sentences. I posted it briefly on RoyalRoad, then pulled it down to rework. And rework it I did—over and over again.

That’s part of the job as an independent author. You’re not just the writer. You’re the copy editor, the designer, the marketer, and everything else. I worked on Subterrania until I was sick of it, then worked on it some more.

Now, holding it in my hands just weeks from publication, it feels surreal to look back. “Do it,” my wife had said. Well, here we are. It took a little over two years—through college, cross-country moves from Utah to Washington to South Carolina, and having a baby—but I did it.

Even if nobody ever read Subterrania, I’d still carry the growth, the skill, and the pride it gave me. That’s the real reward of writing—not just the finished book in your hands, but the person you become in the process.

If this journey resonates with you, I’d love for you to join me as Subterrania finally makes its way into the world. Follow along, share it with a friend, or grab a copy when it launches—you might just find your own spark of inspiration in its pages.