Patrick Flint is famously (or infamously?) based upon my own father, Peter Fagan. Both are doctors. Both love Wyoming, the history of Native Americans, and the outdoors. Both are devoted husbands and fathers. Both prove that even the smartest of men can do the dumbest of things… over and over.

Both dreamed of climbing the Seven Summits. Both found their hobby tolerated by their wife, but not exactly embraced enthusiastically. It is, after all, an expensive, dangerous, and time consuming pursuit.

In the Patrick Flint series, Patrick always has a dream, a goal, an obsession, not unlike the man I grew up with. A few books ago in the series, he merged his love of running with hiking and began mountain climbing. 

IRL, my dad has climbed most of the fourteeners in Colorado, he’s summited Mount Rainier several times, he’s climbed Wheeler Peak in New Mexico and Cloud Peak in Wyoming countless times, and he even made it to the top of Aconcagua, the tallest peak in South America.

In fiction, Patrick’s attempt on Mount Rainier occurs in Snow Ghost, the 9th book in the series. It’s a harrowing journey, and I won’t spoil it for you here. Suffice it to say that while embellished (as I do in all fiction when I pull from real life), most of the anecdotes are drawn from my dad’s reality.

So, how did the Seven Summits dream end up going for my pops?

His climb of Aconcagua took him away from home for weeks. This was back in the mid-90s. Communication between him and my mom was almost nonexistent, and ended completely once he left base camp. Mom was left to fear the worst, alone, since my brother and I had long since grown up and flown the nest. 

Unbeknownst to her, it was about as bad as she expected. Horrific winds that kept them hunkered in their tent, delaying their climb. A near death experience for one of the climbers who had become disoriented by the severe effects of oxygen deprivation on his body. Luckily, their guide, Peter Whitaker of Whitaker Mountaineering (based at Mount Rainier), with whom my father had climbed multiple times before, made a daring and successful rescue. 

Dad came home with a new, first hand respect for the risks. Around this time, his medical school classmate, Beck Weathers, was left for dead in a Mount Everest disaster but miraculously managed to return to safety, although he endured extreme frostbite which resulted in the loss of his right arm, all the fingers on his left hand, and parts of his face.

Between Beck’s experience, my dad’s on Aconcagua, and the anguish she’d felt waiting with no word at home, my mom was even less of a fan than she’d been before. As a result, Dad agreed that he was done with the Seven Summits. 

I’m not sure whether he has any regrets about it. If he does, he hasn’t admitted it. His enthusiasm for the outdoors and mountains has certainly never dimmed.

I was left wanting to bring a similar experience to the pages of Patrick’s world. Snow Ghost is the result, and—if I do say so myself—a very exciting one at that. The first reader other than my husband was, of course, my dad, to make sure I got all the technical elements right. Any remaining mistakes are mine, not his.

Meanwhile, there are of course, other dangers at play in Snow Ghost, in the form of bad people doing bad things. 

They come only from the dark places in my imagination.