Have you ever fallen down an internet rabbit hole? That’s how the idea for this book all started.
During the height of the pandemic, when we were on lockdown and everyone was supposed to stay home for “two weeks,” there was a joke I kept seeing all over the internet. The government just needed the time to change the batteries on all the bird drones.
I’d already heard of the conspiracy about the birds being government spies, but something about the timing of this joke really drove it into my imagination. And so I let the brainstorm begin. I researched the conspiracy – and I highly suggest you do it, it’s highly amusing. It begins with something completely plausible and then gets a bit insane as you keep reading. But it was enough to feed my muse.
After I decided that was the premise for the book, I found my main character, Tessa. And I found her story and her history and met her friends and saw how determined she was and knew she was going to get to the bottom of the nonsense happening around her.
The title was mostly a joke. A title either comes to me right away or never and I need someone’s help. I called the document file The Birds Aren’t Real and called it that to anyone I talked to about it. And finally I said I didn’t know what to call the actual book and we discussed the merits of sticking to The Birds Aren’t Real. Very straightforward and gets right to the point. So it stuck.
I wrote this book over a crazy summer and outline the second book alongside it. And now both are available for you to read anywhere books are sold. And that’s the story of how my book, The Birds Aren’t Real, came to be.