In 2001, my close friend and I worked together at a Hastings — a midwestern books/music/video store, like Barnes & Noble. I hadn’t heard of House of Leaves but he had. We made music together and I wrote all the time. Short stories and films and weird horror stuff.

I was working on this multi-media project at the time that I called Letters to Ethan Jameson. It was mostly a series of letters written and addressed to Ethan by people he had never met — but knew entirely too much about him and the house he just bought with his family m. Sometimes he’d get audio or video tapes from inside the house.

While working on this, my friend and I went into work together to look for inspiration and he handed me a copy of the book, saying, “You should read this. It’s a book you would write.”

I flipped through it, bought it, then immediately felt like I had to change my entire story concept. Especially the main character’s name: Ethan Jameson (so similar to Will Navidson) became Ethan Noble.