Where my book ideas come from: Bad Thoughts

Back in 1996 I was working with an agent who was trying to sell Fast Lane, and he gave me this plot he wanted me write. It was kind of a knockoff of Silence of the Lambs that involved an FBI profiler whose parents were killed years earlier by some nasty serial killer, and she's now hunting down this same killer. I didn't want to do this, and instead reworked the plot significantly to be Bad Thoughts. At the time I was very much into trying to induce an out of body experience and astral voyages, taking Boston Adult Education classes in it, reading books, doing exercises to induce one, etc. and so that whole subject plays heavily in Bad Thoughts. Also, some beyond terrible stuff happened that put me in a really bad state of mind when I wrote it, and that's probably why it turned out to be my bleakest and grimmest book.