Goodreads asked Mark Nelson:

Where did you get the idea for your most recent book?

Mark Nelson Poets grew out of an online interaction with folks who originally gathered together to geek out about our favorite band, Styx. But the group morphed into a diverse community that went far beyond the original intent, and I found myself intrigued by the variety of personality types, political ideas, musical tastes and overall intelligence of the group. A friend in that group and I started finding common ground regarding poetry. Eventually, we started poetry challenges that we posted back and forth on the message board. The community members seemed to enjoy, and the thing took on a life of its own. Eventually, I began seeing the experience as a seed for a story, started messing about with words, and the end result was a story about small lives, big words, bad politics and false religion. Simple!

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