#deadrun

First, a quick synopsis of the book in case you haven’t read it. Sam, the hero, is a young man who believes he can be a champion bike racer. He has a ton of raw talent, and he has motivation: his home life is pretty crappy and racing offers a way out for him. But Sam is also arrogant and pretty self-centered. The book begins when Sam’s teammates dump him because of this bad attitude. So Sam goes in search of a new coach. He finds Viktor, an aging ex-Olympic champion who now owns a bike courier company. They make deal. Viktor will train Sam and in return Sam will deliver packages for Viktor. Special packages, on a ‘dead run’. There’s no paper trail, no signature. These deliveries are completely off the radar. The thing is, it becomes increasingly clear to Sam that what he’s delivering isn’t legal. Then things spiral out of control.

So where did the idea for this book come from? It wasn’t a flash of inspiration out of blue. Instead, it came out of some pretty wildly different ingredients

The starting point was my own experience. I think young adult authors often strip-mine their own adolescence for their books. And it provides a really rich vein. Teenagers feel these titanic – often conflicting - emotions that are compressed and heightened as they grow up.

I knew from the outset that I wanted to play with a particular set of conflicting emotions that many teens experience: the urge to leave the safety of your family behind, to get away and fly free. At the same, the opposite urge to stay where it’s safe and comfortable. As a teenager, you’re smart enough to know that the world is terrifying place, but you also want to get out there and explore despite the risks.

Like Sam, as a teenager I saw the freedom that cycling could bring. Like Sam, I wanted to get out of my small part of the world and see what was out there. And that’s where the real core of the book comes from.

That alone isn’t enough, of course. What I needed next was an interesting setting. I like writing about sub-cultures, ones that exist all around us but often hidden from our daily lives. About this time, I was commuting on the bus to work and I stumbled on a magazine article about bike couriers. I realized that the world of bike couriers was perfect for my story. There were all sorts of cool details that made it fun to write about them. At the same time, I read a book about the war in Yugoslavia and the subsequent rise of Eastern European mafia – fascinating, terrifying stuff. That gave me my bad guys and my conflicted anti-hero, Viktor the coach. His character was also influenced by the story of a bicycle thief in Toronto named Kenk. There’s an excellent graphic novel about him, telling his story in comic book form.    

At this point, I had a lead character with some emotional motivation. And I had a setting: bike couriers, with a dash of Serbian criminals for good measure. Now I needed some plot. And that came from a bunch of movies from my childhood.

For some reason, around this time I had been thinking a lot about old 1970s thrillers. Movies that I had first watched with dad as a teenager. Three Days of the Condor. The French Connection. Diva. I loved the way these films created a sense of ‘the chase.’ Paranoia. Being on the run. Not having anyone to turn to. I started to build a plot with that feeling in mind. These movies also gave, I hope, a cinematic feel to the book, especially with the chase sequences. I tried to capture the momentum and energy of the movies in my writing.

Watch this scene, from Diva, to see what I was going for. I actually wrote a similar sequence where Sam rides down into the subway, then had to cut it because the book was getting too long. While you're at it, watch this explanation of the big chase sequence in the French Connection. Seriously, they don't make movies like that anymore. In fact, they can't. It's illegal.

By the way, I tucked a few references to the movies in Dead Run. There’s a scene with a baby carriage that I kind of borrowed from the French Connection. And the destination for Sam’s dead run is the office of “Five Continents Imports” - which is also the address of Robert Redford’s spy agency in Three Days of the Condor.