May 3, 2022 · Writing
What's the Origin Story of The Last Delivery Driver?
KC Kenedy
Creator & co-author
Hi, my name's Chris Kelley. I'm the creator and co-author of The Last Delivery Driver.
The main objective of this post is to give a little context to the story — the novel The Last Delivery Driver: Broken Fences, which is now available on Amazon.
The idea and origin story of the Last Delivery Driver dates back to 2016. I was working on a food delivery startup called Spoonr when I started seeing autonomous vehicle tests in the news. I thought — what would this world look like? What would it be like to be one of the last humans doing something that machines had taken over?
The First Note of The Last Delivery Driver
A Story Emerges
On Christmas of 2015, I received The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron — a guide to cultivating creativity through daily morning pages. My mom gifted a used copy to me. With the newfound habit of writing in 2016, I carried an enthusiasm for storytelling I hadn't had since high school.
"The notes, the idea, and the story of LDD were all tiny seeds. I knew if I was going to see out my vision, I'd need help."
Taking my Pen, Pad, and Story Back to School
In the fall of 2016, I enrolled in a class at Rice University's Continuing Education Program called Publishing Your First Novel, taught by author Alexis Glynn Latner, who opened with a line I still think about:
"This is the most hopeful time in a generation to be a new writer."
— Alexis Glynn Latner
I felt more confident I could pull it off, but knew it would be a lot of work. I ended the year with enough to know the story had legs — and enough humility to know I needed a writing partner to get it across the finish line.
A significant element of the Artist's Way is the principle: there is an underlying, in-dwelling creative force in the universe — and when you align with it, things move. My big hurdle was getting over the fear of making something awful. First drafts are rough. That's the job.