The underlying idea for The Exterminators came about in May of 1991 during a brainstorming session with a former screenwriting partner. That idea became Pest Control. We wrote a screenplay but it went nowhere. Four years later I wrote the story as a comic novel. After rejections from 124 agents, Pest Control finally secured representation. Over the next fifteen years, Pest Control was published all over the world, the film rights were sold to Warner Brothers, a German company produced it as a radio play, and it was staged as a musical (of all things) in Los Angeles where it won the Ovation Award for best costume (a six foot tall cockroach with expanding wings). During all this time my agent frequently urged me to write a sequel to Pest Control but I didn’t have a satisfactory story. When I finally came up with a story I liked, my agent retired.