The Book Is Real Now

Six years ago, this was just a question.

I was cutting my son's hair in the bathroom — one mirror in front of him, another behind, his reflection going back and back until the room ran out — when he asked: what if that's another world? What if I got pulled in?

We built the rest of it standing right there. The hallway. The six doors. The rules for how you get out. Then life did what life does — three kids, a full-time job — and the story sat in a drawer while they grew up and left the house.

The photo above is my son holding the finished book for the first time. He's holding it the way you hold something that only used to exist in your head — carefully, like it might still be a story.

He's active duty now, and he came home for the week to be here for the release.

That's the part I still can't quite get over. For six years The Mirror lived in my head and in a few conversations at the kitchen table. Now it's something you can hold. Book One, Basic Training, is out now. Book Two, Extra Life, arrives November 16.

Here's the question people ask me first: is any of it real? The two boys are. One of them is my son. His best friend is in the books as himself. My daughter edits every draft and is usually right. I didn't have to invent the way they argue — I just had to stop myself transcribing it.

He was twelve when he asked. He was grown before it became a book. That's why I finally wrote it down — not to freeze him at twelve, but to keep the question, and to leave them something they can pass down to kids of their own.

Six doors. Five keys. Three chances. One way home.

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