Ethan McCormick, a Miami Police officer, was born in my mind when I was a teenager. It all started in an English class. My teacher, Ms. Thompson, gave us all a short story assignment. I had been writing horror stories since I was a young kid so I was a little excited about the project. Instead of writing in my particular genre, I branched out with a thriller story. In the story, Ethan's sister, Valerie, is taken hostage by a drug dealer who is seeking revenge on Ethan for crippling his business. Ethan is relatively new on the force but already making waves. He is overcome by his emotions and charges into the building, taking on the hostage taker head on. I won't spoil the outcome for you here. Perhaps I will provide a copy of the short story in a future McCormick novel. Let me know if you would like that. I had fun writing the story but didn't think much else of it. At this point in my life, writing was only a hobby. I never thought of doing it professionally. That changed when my teacher, who I credit with the actual start of my writing career, told me how much she enjoyed the story. That sparked something in me and I started pursuing creative writing classes and even talked with a published author. I got very excited about the whole thing and started writing even more short stories. Starting to focus more on Ethan McCormick, I wrote more stories involving him. I even played with the idea of killing the character off in one of those stories. Luckily, I didn't do that and eventually the thought of a full novel based on this character came to mind. It took me a very long time to finish that novel and come up with a proper plot. It went through so many re-writes, so many plot changes, that the final product was unrecognizable to the "original." Because of all of these short stories I wrote, I felt like I really got to know this character. He was a character I had been working on for many years and had developed a whole family and life for. In my novel, To the Wolves, there are characters present that existed because of later stories. Most of these McCormick stories will never see publication, but I love having parts of them worked into my novel. Fun fact, Ethan's last name was taken from my math teacher in 8th grade. That fact is pretty funny when you consider the fact that math was always my least favorite subject in school. What does that mean? Not a clue.
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ABOUT BONDTo cover up his search history, Evan Bond is a thriller/suspense author. As an outdoor enthusiast and horror lover, Evan Bond enjoys writing stories where the two come together. He lives in Florida with his wife and two sons. |