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Has an idea or thought just gnawed inside you, kicking and screaming to get out, and not letting you have any peace until you did something to let it out? Well that is how my first book started. Actually the idea came to me over 20 years back during the cold war. An inane spy television show was on in which the Soviet Union had made a supposedly exact duplicate of a U.S. Army officer to infiltrate him into the U.S. The thought popped into my mind: what if a fellow officer, a closeted gay crotch gazer saw him in a rest room and realized the discrepancy? Certain body parts can’t be easily duplicated. Heaven knows why this thought came to my mind, but it did. I also thought to myself, it might be interesting to write a book about that—some day. Somehow the idea of integrating current events, international intrigue with “outcasts” of society fascinated me. Remember, being gay was not all that well accepted in the 1980s, although perhaps gays were not total outcasts.

The idea lingered in my subconscious. Occasionally I would tell my ideas to trusted acquaintances—I certainly couldn’t discuss such a topic with just anyone. One acquaintance even suggested I have the military officer gather his buddies from the local gay bar to go find the perpetrators and beat them up, or do something violent with them. At that time I was busy developing my career, raising my family, and doing things that would not allow non-essential activities like writing a work of fiction. Also this was in the days before personal computers so writing in longhand on a yellow legal pad would have been the mode, and not for me at that point in my busy life.

By 2005, the idea of a book was long gone; forgot all about it. The cold war was over and the basis for the plot had disappeared long ago. Then, imagine my surprise when the idea popped into my head again out of the clear blue! I could write the story with al Qaeda as the bad guys. This time the idea just wouldn’t let go of me. So a couple of weeks later in early January 2006 I sat down at my computer—the use of computers really helped the motivation—and started writing.

Well, it wasn’t that simple. There had to be characters and locations and some notion of a plot. The location to start with came fairly quickly: Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio is pretty well known for having weapons systems and intelligence activities that would be of interest to al Qaeda and others not so friendly with the US. The duplicated military officer had to be an Arab-American, which was not difficult; Lebanese are well integrated throughout the US and finding a Lebanese name that also sounded American—like that of Danny Thomas—was not much of a challenge. The rest of the characters for first chapter came to me easily enough.

But one chapter does not make a book. I needed a plot. Al Qaeda just doesn’t come into the US without some local support and back-up. When the idea to write the book using al Qaeda as the perpetrators popped into my mind and started kicking and screaming in very late 2005, guess what? At the same time I had just read about a community of poor Yemini immigrants in Lackawanna, New York, who were split between support or antipathy for al Qaeda. Plus there were plenty of news reports about al Qaeda sleeper cells around the U.S. Lackawanna and its immigrant community immediately went into the plot and it developed from there. Amazingly, during 2006 the “Lackawanna six” were arrested and brought to trial for supporting terrorist activities, giving unanticipated credibility to my plot.

Also, al Qaeda needed access to medical technology. No problem. Syria was essentially a Soviet satellite and Russian doctors would be welcome there. Syria apparently doesn’t mind cooperating with al Qaeda if it suits its purpose and enough money is involved.

Other amazing things happened. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police intercepted a terrorist plot to bomb places in the Toronto area right at the ideal place in the story line that I was writing that day so that I could put it right into the plot and make it even more interesting and exciting. The characters were already in the Toronto area because they had travelled there to carry out the local self-proclaimed imam’s not-so-legal business. Lackawanna is only 10 miles from the border, not far from Toronto, and some of the Yemeni immigrants had also settled around Toronto. Later in 2006, the tragic war in Lebanon occurred just at the right time to fit into the plot. The book is a current events chronicle in a fun, fictional setting.

It wasn’t all this easy though. Many challenges presented themselves. Very early on, a dear friend told me I wasn’t developing the characters well enough. Once I took this advice and started doing so, I realized it was fun. It was fun to describe characters and settings, to develop personalities for them and match descriptions to personalities. Somehow, I just started writing in dialogue without being consciously aware I was doing so. Valued critics—the good kind who tell me what they think rather than what they think I want to hear—told me this writing dialogue  is one of my strengths as a writer. It is thoroughly enjoyable telling a story through the eyes and mouths of others, but there are challenges as well. Often the characters themselves helped me out, though. For instance, when it was time for Omar to tell us more about his research on Islam, I pondered on how to do so. There were enough monologues already so having Omar discuss his research directly wasn’t a good idea. Then it was as if Melissa Andrews, the FBI agent who met Omar in North Carolina, were standing next to me and tapping me on my shoulder saying: “I’ll do it; I’ll ask him and we’ll have a conversation about it as I drive him to Chapel Hill.”

Another fun thing was visiting and taking pictures of places I had described in the book. Some of them were genuine surprises. Right at the beginning, I had Patrick, the duplicated Army officer, living in a down-market 1960s style house with a double garage in Fairborn, Ohio. After the book had been published and I was out traveling, I found a house in Fairborn that fit my description exactly.

And back up the road, right where I had described it, the perpetrators were holed up in a shabby apartment to be close to Patrick.

And Mary, Help of Christians Roman Catholic Church was just at the end of the street.

Go to my website, www.HeathDanielsBooks.com and you will find a lot more of the pictures.

Without consciously realizing it, I found myself developing themes that can be enjoyable and interesting to explore. Things like immigrants’ struggles to find their way in society, especially Arab Americans. Gay life in America; especially the notion that gays are just like the cross section of all of us except for that one thing: the gender of the persons to whom they are attracted. Gays are involved in all walks of life, so why shouldn’t they be involved in international intrigue and action tales? Spirituality, being a special interest of mine, also found its way into the story as characters, including the gay ones, found and developed their spiritual paths.

There you have it, a bit of an introduction to my writing of Three Kisses. There’s some more in the Afterword. Enjoy a good tour around many parts of the world with me and some delightful, realistic characters.