The first question folks often ask a novelist is about their book’s inspirations. How did you come up with the idea? Is this a true story about you? What inspired the book? Often I tell people a fictional story is a compilation of truth and made up details. I might find a person’s quirk interesting and include them in a work. One of life’s perplexities might have been niggling at my brain for many years, and it ends up in some form in a novel. Often I take a little reality and change some of the actual details and it becomes fiction.

In the case of my middle-grade novel, Hotel Oscar Mike Echo, many experiences inspired the novel—some of them embedded deep in my soul, and some as a result of volunteer work I’ve done, or relationships with front-line folks. The book addresses hard issues in life, from a mother and daughter with no place to live, poverty, bullying, unstable parenting, and more.

Here’s an example of a moment that I carry embedded in my soul and that caused me to look long and hard at the cruel treatment some people encounter, as well as the worth and value of all people, no matter their race, economic status, education, etc. I suspect, unconsciously, this experience influenced my writing.

When I was in college in Tallahassee in 1978, I had a Black roommate in the dorm. One day, the two of us went to a local restaurant for lunch. Once we were seated, the waitress came by and slapped the menus on the table without a word then walked away. I thought it was a bit abrupt on her part, but just studied the menu and mulled over my selection. And then we waited. And waited. When I tried to flag down the woman, she wouldn’t come to our table, instead huddling with other waitresses across the room.

Finally, I said out loud, looking around the place, “What is going on here?”

My roommate, sitting straight and tall and dignified, responded, “You really don’t know?”

“No. I really don’t know. What’s happening?”

“It’s because you’re with me,” she said.

For a moment, my world tilted. I had never encountered behavior like that waitress exhibited. It was 1978, as I mentioned, and I naively believed race relations were improved. I was from Massachusetts, far north of the Mason Dixon line, a place with its own stories of racism, but I had never encountered such hostility in a restaurant before. And at that moment with my dear roommate, I couldn’t fathom the indignities in her life, indignities that allowed her to read the room immediately and know exactly what was happening while I decided between a chicken sandwich or a cheeseburger and fries.

I grabbed her and we left to patronize another establishment.

Somewhere deep inside, that episode left a mark on me, along with other experiences. I didn’t consciously decide to write a middle-grade novel portraying people from different racial backgrounds living together because of that moment in time, but I do wonder about the power of that day to seep into my psyche and  shape my story when I considered who would be the hero in my novel, who would stand straight and tall and dignified. I’ll give you a hint: it’s the Goodwins, the Black couple who envelop my main character with love and safety.

Other experiences contributed to my desire to write about hard circumstances. For years, my son worked for a non-profit tasked with finding permanent homes for kids in foster care. His up-close perspective on the plight of these kids and their longings for a stable home life broke his heart—and my heart. Today, he drives around his city, pointing to different houses and saying, “A sad kid lives there. And a sad kid lives there. And a sad kid lives there.”

All those sad kids.

And then my husband and I started teaching parenting to men in our county’s local maximum-security jail. Through their stories, we heard about the children at home waiting for stability in their lives, trying to stay in touch, trying to connect with their fathers. One young boy showed up for visiting hours dressed in all orange. He told his dad he wanted to look like him. “Don’t you ever come here wearing that again,” the father told him. “I don’t want you looking like me in here. I want you doing better than me.”

Their story became one more inspiration for me to write about kids whose parents have lost their way.

In addition to the jail, I’ve taught literacy to the formerly homeless and incarcerated. In my novel, I based the transitional home where my main character and her mom finally land as they try and get on their feet on a home here in Illinois where I used to serve as a literacy tutor to women with no home. Through the power of fiction, I moved that Illinois home into the city of Richmond after spending time with a dear friend who lived in the inner city there and served the children of an impoverished neighborhood. Her work and the work of her organization embedded itself in my soul.

Because these stories simmered below the surface for many years, growing my own burden for the plight of the hurting, as fiction writers do, I took these life experiences and perspectives and blended them together on the page. Writing often allows the writer to make sense out of chaos and find meaning in moments that feel meaningless. I combined snippets of my life and formed them into a story to be passed along to others, hopefully to instill the same world-tilting moment as I experienced while witnessing my college roommate’s indignity.

Even the main premise of the novel appeared as part reality and part fiction. During the weeks where I was mulling over how to begin and how to structure Hotel Oscar Mike Echo, I went on my usual walks in my neighborhood, thinking about who would people my story. Several nights in a row, an older White gentleman and a young Black girl road their bikes past me, right down the center of the road as they peddled side by side, eyes locked on each other as they talked. Their bond captivated me, and I wondered about their story and their relationship. Was he her grandfather? A friend? A neighbor?

I decided to explore them in fiction but didn’t feel I had the authority to write from the first-person point of view of a young Black girl. So, I switched them—and eleven-year-old Sierra and Mr. Goodwin were born. Once I made this literary decision, I never saw the man and young girl in my neighborhood again. It was as if they rode into my life to inspire a novel and kept riding right on their way. Their bike ride became an actual scene in the novel. Mr. Goodwin, based on the man in my neighborhood, takes young Sierra on bike rides through the city of Richmond to teach history lessons.

The novel releases in a few days, offering a glimpse into the kind of pain some kids and their families tragically live with on a daily basis and sometimes for many years. I hope you read Sierra’s and the Goodwin’s story with all of this background in mind, growing in compassion and understanding as I like to think I have done.

Hotel Oscar Mike Echo is available wherever books are sold, or here, or at the book’s website here. Follow me on Instagram @lindamackillopwriter or Facebook at lindakerrmackillop. And let’s keep in touch via my newsletter!