Last year I remember reading some updates of writer friends of mine with children and wondering how they did it. All those posts about getting in a half hour of writing here or there while the child was asleep/distracted/caged. I thought “There’s no way I could write like that.”

Now I have a not-so-little boy about to turn 11 months old, who really wants to race me up the stairs and bang his head on the floor while practising MMA moves on his teddy bear, and that’s exactly how I write. When I can, however I can.

Take today, for instance. My wife managed to slip out of the house while I wasn’t looking, no doubt to some spa appointment where she leisurely made her way through the latest New Yorker while attendants hand-fed her peeled grapes. Meanwhile, I spent the day at home with Edmund Hillary Jr., who was determined to climb the Everest steps solo, without the help of his overgrown Sherpa. The only solution was to stick him in the high chair and feed him lima beans and other tasty treats with one hand while typing out a murder scene with the other. And so it came to happen that a stray piece of avocado inspired a memorable moment with an eyeball in the new book….