“The basic premise of the story is, it’s a young family� in Central Texas, the Hill Country,� says author Bill Cotter of his latest novel, The Splendid Ticket. “They suffer a terrible domestic tragedy, and they try to stay together as a family. They begin to disintegrate and they’re falling apart. Ten years later, they’re hanging on and they win a lottery. And the question, of course, is will that help? Will that make any difference? And I won’t say if it does or not. You can imagine, given the way that people usually wind up after they’ve won a lottery. But I’m not giving much away � all this stuff happens at the beginning of the book.�
Unlike the characters in The Splendid Ticket, Cotter has never won a multimillion-dollar lottery or experienced the life changes that come with such an event. “There’s not much that comes from real life in this book,� he says. “My first book, called Fever Chart, was semi-autobiographical � I guess that happens a lot with� first-time writers. This one’s not. This one is all made up.�
So that means that Cotter had to do some research into the lives of past lottery winners. “I also had to research, in depth, the ‘precipitating tragedy,� as I call it, which involves a gun,� Cotter says. “And I know nothing about guns; I’ve never handled one, don’t know what they feel like, anything. I never touched one. I just talked to a couple of people that knew something about guns, and did a lot of internet research � who doesn’t? � but I really wanted to talk to somebody. I had specific questions about how guns worked, what they smelled like, things like that. But I still didn’t want to touch one. It just wasn’t something I wanted to do and still don’t.�
Cotter says The Splendid Ticket didn’t start out as a full-length novel. “It actually started as a short story,� he says. “[And] it was suggested to me, ‘it sounds like a chapter in a book. Why don’t you make a novel out of that?� So the original short story is actually a chapter in this book. You know, I just wanted to tell some kind of story. And I like writing � I just like words and making sentences and hoping they come out as a novel. And one of the reviews, or blurbs, of this book is� it was from Adam Levin [author of The Instructions], and he said something like ‘this book has no business working as a novel, but somehow it does.� And I think that sums it up pretty well.�
Have his years spent researching and writing about lottery winners made Cotter more or less interested in playing the lottery himself? “Much less,� he says. “I didn’t buy one of those $2 billion tickets. But I did think very hard about what it would be like to win.�
