Why Roxie?

I must confess, I never thought this book would actually get written. When I was a kid, writing a novel was a dream, something I figured may someday happen, but probably would never be a reality. Not with all the other distractions of life. Not with my history of procrastination. Deep down, I guess I always assumed it’d be something I’d be ruing over on my death bed. But here we are. The book has been completed. It’s been analyzed and scrutinized, proofread and edited. It has a title and a cover and an ISBN designation. But even though it’s now so tangible, such a fixture in my life, I still keep asking myself, why Roxie?

It began in my college dorm room, Wetzel Hall, Western Illinois University, Macomb, Illinois, in September 2000. I never thought I’d go to college, but after a year of working odd jobs out of high school, not really getting anywhere in life, I decided to enroll. But I soon learned that college is boring! Three hours a day of class, a little homework, a party at night. How was I supposed to fill the day? One of my favorite pastimes has always been looking at maps, so one evening I sat in my dorm room with my road atlas open, scanning the pages and wondering to myself about this place and that. I came upon a little town of unknown significance, crammed somewhere within the forgotten part of America, and something about it just jumped from the page. I stared at its name as it beckoned me. Roxie. “Roxie? What’s Roxie?” I thought. It sounded exotic, or cathartic, or bucolic, or some combination of the three. What was it like? Who lived there? What did they do? I knew nothing about it, but I condemned it anyway. It seemed like a hopeless place, a forgotten place, a place of no importance. I judged it based on its location on the map, the size of the type the mapmaker had used to spell it out its name. I judged it based its proximity from places of actual importance. Places like Macomb, Illinois.

But then I pictured some 19-year-old Roxie kid sitting somewhere beneath that tiny black dot, maybe looking at a road map himself, wondering the same things I was. Picking towns at random and debating their significance. Maybe finding Macomb and calculating its level of hopelessness. Roxie was that kid’s center, his base, the place in the world that made the most sense to him, just as Macomb was for me. Maybe I’d run into him someday. Maybe we’d trade stories of our raising, compare our towns, wax poetically about the significance of a certain swimming hole or catfish spot or gas station that was the center of our world, but would be meaningless to anyone unfamiliar with our domain. I became obsessed with this notion. And I just had to start writing.

The first go-round wasn’t all that successful. I didn’t take the time to map out an approach to the book, and I didn’t really have a solid concept of where it was going at the end. I typed about 40 pages, not bad for a 19-year-old kid who’d never taken a creative writing class or been to a writing seminar (or really even read that much). It was a start, and I was going to be patient. I put it down for a while, and when I returned to it a year later, I realized it was garbage. I remember doing a “select all” and erasing the entire thing!

Years went by and I thought about the book constantly. But rather than acting on it by actually typing, I opted to draft an outline of it in my head. Whenever I’d be driving or hiking or mowing the lawn, I’d be contemplating an approach to the story. There were many moments where I’d almost shout out, “Aha!” and run off to the kitchen to go find a pen. But for more than a decade, that’s where the story remained, parts of it scattered about my top dresser drawer upon scribbled-out Post-It notes, the rest lodged deep within my ears, where I’d figure it’d stay until my dying day.

Then suddenly, one day, many, many years later, the work began. I don’t know if it was a sense of boredom or a spark of inspiration, but I just sat down and started typing. Maybe having kids or becoming a Christian or having a steady job brought it on. I still don’t know for sure, but what I do know is that I was furiously busy and Roxie was constantly on my mind. Now I’d go for a drive or a hike or mow the lawn only to have an opportunity to think about it. Now there were Post-It notes everywhere!

When all was said and done, it took about three years to complete the project, two years of writing and one year of editing and publishing. I reworked the beginning so many times I’ve lost count. It is still my least favorite part of the book, but I’m thrilled with how the ending came together (I don’t think I’d change a single word of the last five chapters).

So that’s it! I hope hearing a little background will help you to enjoy the message of this story and feel the power that God has inspired in its words. Thank you all for your interest in Roxie and I’d love to hear back from everyone on what they think.