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First of all, let me apologize for taking up all of your inboxes with Post-its this month (and last month, too), but I wanted to let those of you who live in the Northwest know where I'll be--this is the last of the in between ones, I promise...back on schedule in August. . .

I'm taking my motorcycle (since it gets about 103 miles-to-the-gallon) through the great northwest on the last part of my book tour.

My fascination with all things two-wheeled began when my father brought home an old Indian Scout motorcycle which was distributed in fourteen peach baskets. He set about putting it all back together while my brother and I watched. We knew better than to ask how it had come apart, especially in front of our mother. I remember how we all stood on the safety of the porch in anticipation as Dad fired her up with one heroic kick, and then how we watched in horror as it took him up the hillside behind our house and into a grove of saplings and weeds that forever after became known as the crash-pad.

Later, after adjusting the clutch and tempering a sticky carburetor linkage, the old man persuaded Mom to get on the back for a ride, but later that morning he returned at full throttle into the crash-pad without her. Without comment, he left the Indian laying on the hill, smoldering, and departed in the trusty Dodge. An hour later he returned with my mother, who was also not in a talkative mood. Evidently, the Indian had broken down and my mother had had to push-start my father who couldn't stop and had turned around at speed to yell that he'd be back later to pick her up.

That was not a happy day.

I don't think my wife would've gone for it, either.

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The question I get most from readers: where do your ideas come from?

So that's what I'll talk about this week.

Let's begin: what if an ordinary man got to have an adventure with a Jason Bourne/Jack Bauer kind of hero?

It is perhaps odd for a novelist to admit that any book idea could be fueled by film or television, but I think it's silly to pretend to ignore the pervasive influence the cinematic arts have on us all-including writers. (And yes, I know Jason Bourne comes from the Ludlum novels, but I for one prefer the recent film versions.)

This was the first grain of the idea that grew into my new thriller, Collision. Where most novels have one protagonist, I would have two: a typical businessman, a road warrior type with Bluetooth headset that we see crowding every airport terminal, a man devoted to his work, cocooned in his safe and comfortable life; and a disgraced spy, a highly trained operative who can kill you a dozen different ways. The drama, I thought, would come from the conflict of the two men: their resentment at being forced together into danger, their differing approaches to solving their problems and overcoming a dangerous conspiracy that threatens far more than their lives, but our national security.

But as I wrote the book, I realized the drama, and the suspense, was coming from a deeper conflict.

These two men are opposite sides of a coin.