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Ok, it's not like I woke up one morning and said "Hey, I got it! I'll write a coming-of-age story about teenage drug traffickers. You know, for kids!"

But life is funny this way. Things happen that you never could have predicted.

It all started years ago when I was a filmmaker. One day, I met a real life surf mule. He was a friend of a friend and as I started to hear tales of his adventures in the surfer run world of pot smugglers, I immediately thought: there's a movie in this.

His stories were so outrageous and bigger than life, the characters so vivid and unique that I couldn't stop thinking about it. Together with my friend, we started gathering these tall tales and thinking of a script.

We did copious research and witnessed the whole business first hand, from start to finish. Some pretty risky stuff but I had my excuse if we were ever caught: But your honor, we were researching a screenplay!"

Well, that story never made it to the silver screen and I got diverted into the world of new media for 10 years. But things have a funny way of coming around again.

Cut to 2005. I was illustrator working on books for toddlers. I had several books that were in the pipeline but due to rising cost issues with manufacturing my interactive books, several projects are put on hold or cancelled. In frustration, I started to write.

What did I write? Not the fluffy cutsy stuff I'd been illustrating, but I found myself going back to my dark edgy film roots. I tackled a story called Yummy, about an 11 year old gangbanger who made the cover of TIME, which turned into a graphic novel (coming out at the end of this year).

Then one day, I was back in California visiting my parents. I was going for a walk on Hermosa Beach and way down the shore, I noticed a big commotion. There were about 50 surfers in the water, with two coast guard boats, their water canons shooting high into the sky. On the beach, a large crowd had gathered with several lifeguard trucks, their lights blazing. My first thought was: beached whale. They must be trying to lure a whale back out to sea.

But when I got up close, I saw it was some kind of ceremony. A young surfer in his teens had died a few days earlier in a surfing accident. I looked around and saw surfers from age 7 to 70 and many others from the community. They were spreading his ashes out to sea, and I thought, who was this kid to inspire such a turnout?

When I got home, I couldn't get it out of my mind, so I started writing a scene, which eventually became chapter 4. I was just trying to capture the moment and what these people were feeling about this young surfer. It was just supposed to be a short story, but my writing group liked it a lot and wanted more. They started asking: How did this kid die? What was his story up till that moment? I wrote more. And the more I wrote, the more they wanted.

Eventually, I remembered the script I had written with my friend. Somehow, that idea entered into this world I was creating through a character who was a pot smoker. It happened organically and by accident, but soon, the two threads were off and running.

I hadn't set out to write a book about drug smugglers for teens. And I certainly didn't want to do a moral book about drugs (See? He did drugs and look what happened to him!) The events in the book are inspired by things that happened in real life. And I like to think that I treated them honestly, good or bad.

But the story knows what it wants to be and in the end, it was the characters that dictated the story. They came alive and lead me to places I never could have imaged earlier. I didn't question their direction. Instead, like a good journalist, I followed them around and recorded their actions. Yeah, I made things harder for them along the way but only because I wanted to see what they would do to get out of a particularly tricky situation.

So what is Surf Mules really about? In a word: choices: the choices we make when we leave our adolescence behind-along with the friends and lifestyles that go with them. Two lifelong surfers, whose only dream of the future was to surf their days away, must now confront the cold hard reality of adulthood and whether or not to abandon the only life they've ever known. Thrown for a loop by the death of another buddy, they are offered an easy way to keep their dream alive...becoming surf mules. They take a stab at the easy way out, only to find out nothing in life comes easy.

Walking into an uncertain future after high school is a scary and foreboding moment. How we do it and whether we make a true break from the past or try to hold onto our childhood can sometimes lead to missteps that can take us down the wrong path.

My books are provocative by nature. They deal with subject matters many adults might feel uncomfortable talking about: Gangs, drugs, teen violence, sex, stalking, life in the inner city. I try to show these topics honestly without dogma or stigma attached. They show the truth as I have seen it and hopefully, they provoke discussion and thought. I hope readers get something real out of Logan's fictional journey to adulthood. His decisions are very real. The key for him and for us, is to learn from these choices, good and bad, and to keep moving forward.

I'd like to think that these books can plant seeds in young people's head, so when they encounter these situations in real life, they might have some knowledge to help them navigate through these waters. Just saying NO does nothing. Teens are young adults and need to be treated as such, with honesty and directness.

Read about the history of surfer smugglers here.

Tomorrow: Writing and surviving your first novel

G. Neri, Surf Mules, Putnam Juvenile, Penguin Books