Blink Once to Spread Snow evolved as a mixture of fact and fiction based on extensive research, travel, and information given reluctantly by the author's father before his death in 2003. The central character, Cal Brenneman, is modeled on the personality and strength of that individual, who, like Cal Brenneman, spent four years in England during WWII as a medical technician and ambulance driver in the Salisbury area.
Although his father never visited Colorado, the author spent time in the Loveland area many years ago with someone very remindful of Henry Drollard's character, someone who climbed Long's Peak many times and had a delivery route into the Rockies.
DeeDee Brennenman's death in Wolf Creek is based in family history occurring a generation earlier than the incident in the book. That child was two years younger than DeeDee when he fell through the ice as his father, the author's great-grandfather, worked nearby.
As Adam Conner and most people who have spent much time driving I-80 say, it can often seem a little like the Wild West with its heavy truck traffic and wide open spaces. But on holidays, especially holidays with bad weather in the isolated sections of central Pennsylvania, traffic can be very sparse. In that kind of a setting, it is easy to imagine a situation that would require some kind of personal response to an accident, the kind of response that Adam Conner feels compelled to provide.
From I-80 to Galway Bay most likely found its origins in one Christmas morning when the author with his wife and two children in the car had pulled off the road because of whiteout conditions, thinking that he had them safely out of harm's way only to have a semi suddenly explode into view immediately beside them, so close that the two inches of air between the two vehicles compressed with such force that their small car shuddered violently then moved a few inches to the right.
From I-80 to Galway Bay also has roots in a trip to Ireland that involved much walking in Dublin and St. Stephen's Green, a visit with Fungi the dolphin in Dingle harbor, and a hike across the cliffs of Slieve League.
However, the author would like to again remind his wife that he has NEVER used the website mentioned in the novel's Dublin setting.
EVER.
My first reaction a few years ago, while watching a documentary on Deep Brain Stimulation, was utter amazement. Someone drilling a hole in a skull then inserting electrodes into living human brains. The patient in the midst of tremors suddenly becoming calmed by a current of electricty precisely discharged from somehing similar to a pacemaker. Astonishing!
But it was what would happen afterwards on occasion that sent my imagination into overdrive... the experience of a childhood memory, an event long forgotten suddenly Unlocked.
