I’ve got a piece up over at the Globe revealing the editorial process behind The Warhol Gang and where I got my ideas. (Hint: my life.)

I’d written a novel where I’d kept the main character at a distance.

Why? It didn’t matter. All that did matter was I had to figure out who he was. If I didn’t know, how would readers? But I was running out of time as my deadline approached. And my editors had to be growing impatient, although they didn’t show it, bless them.

So I did the only thing I could think of. After numerous edits, and when it was nearly time to deliver a finished manuscript, I rewrote the book. Up until that point, it had always been in third person, with all the emotional distance that third person brings. Now I changed everything to first person. Instead of asking, “Who is he?” and “What does he want?” I asked “Who am I?” and “What do I want?”

I didn’t tell anyone what I was doing. Not my editors, not my agent.

Not even my wife.