Counting Minutes | Gay MxM |

Writer Reveal: The Story Behind the Story

Hello! I hope you enjoyed my little book! Okay, sure, it's not that little, and it definitely wasn't just a simple romance story I thought I was going to write. This story forced me to grow as an author – and a little bit as an individual – over the six years I spent writing it, and I'm sure it will forever be the book that taught me more about storytelling than any other work I'll create.

How Counting Minutes Came to Be

The story started as a very simple idea I one day came up with. A friend of mine and I were talking about homeschooling. Since my imagination is constantly on the lookout for new ideas, I had this tiny little thought about a character who was being homeschooled. I didn't know the reason yet, and all I really had was this short flash of a scene where he was sitting behind his computer in his home, and someone else was peering in through the window.

I still remember this image clearly, even after so many years have passed. Now it's fascinating to think that this one second of an image then turned into a six-year project which would take about sixteen hours to read once finished, according to Wattpad. Especially since most of the time I simply disregard these tiny ideas.

But not this one. I didn't take the idea seriously right away, but I let it float about for a while. I was mostly focused on the question, why was he homeschooled, and one of the answers I came up with was, maybe he can't leave his house. But why?

Maybe he has some kind of illness? I played with this thought for a bit. Maybe he had one of those illnesses that even a simple flu could kill him. I wasn't really into the idea, mostly because it would make it hard to introduce the love interest, and even harder to write their romance. And I want romance. I doubt I'll ever write a book without it. Besides, a theme like this sounded like a lot of heartache and even death, which were not the themes I wanted to have in the book.

Maybe his parents are the reason? Maybe they are forcing him to stay indoors all the time? I considered having a mother who was obsessively overprotective of her kid. There is a Finnish song about a mother like that. She had two daughters, one of which was already dead. The other daughter was not allowed to leave the house, but she finally escapes, only to end up dead as well. A pretty cool idea, but since I'd already had several sets of bad parents in my books, I wanted to go with something completely else.

Maybe he can leave his house and has another reason to be homeschooled? I mean, homeschooling is a pretty common thing. It doesn't have to be a big deal. But I really liked the idea that he can't leave his house at all. Like Rapunzel, locked in her tower, and the love interest was on his way to save her.

At this point, I was also trying to decide how I was going to introduce the love interest. They obviously had to meet online because there just was not a way for them to meet otherwise. But that image I had. That little fleeting moment about the main character sitting behind his computer while someone else is peering in. Choosing to make them meet online was a simple answer, but I didn't want a simple answer. I wanted the love interest to meet him by looking through the window just like in the flash I had.

So how could I make that happen? A neighbor kid who happens to pass by his window? Or someone who's just curious to see if the rumors are true and there's a guy his age living in that house, but no one has ever seen him?

Or... a thief?

Yes.

But if the guy is a thief and breaks into people's houses... We were talking about a high school kid, after all. There were a lot of stories like that, and they weren't really enjoying a good reputation. Besides, if I wanted to have any kind of mature themes in the book, I was safer with having adult characters.