Every novel begins with the germ of an idea, or several connected ideas, that eventually flower into the final product. Do you recall your earliest thoughts about Street Freaks and what kind of story you wanted to tell?

Hey, I remember everything about how this book came into being. But it didn’t start with a germ of an idea. It started with a whole bunch of thoughts about a story that moved away from fantasy and into the realm of what I call futuristic thrillers. Like everyone else, I have been troubled for some time by the contentious, polarizing mindset of the U.S. population and especially those who purport to be our leaders. Anger, blame assignment, refusal to cooperate or to see the other guy’s point of view, refusal to believe facts when it is inconvenient to do so, and especially a tendency towards putting an emphasis on prejudice against those not like us.

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It was this last form of poor behavior that really struck a nerve. I tried to think ahead to how it might evolve over the next several hundred years. Prejudice, after all, evolves with each new generation and takes on new forms and fresh emphasis. We talk about eliminating prejudice against others, but in the course of the human existence we have never been able to do so. We tamp it down and we try to be better, but it is always there. So I wondered where it might sew its seeds next, and I knew the answer almost immediately.