...was king of Nissan Stadium.

When I started writing my novel, I only had three scenes in my head: the opening temptation scene, the jailbreak, and the big finale. I wrote them all in a few days, then had to fill in the massive blanks that connected them. 

The original finale also had no real setting, just a big open room. I left it like that when writing it the first time, and chose not to care a whole lot because I knew the story would change by the time I got back to the finale. Boy did it ever. It had to be almost completely rewritten because basically none of my characters were the same people anymore; they'd had a whole book full of things happen to them. 

But I still needed a big room. I had set the book in a couple of iconic locations here in Franklin and up in Nashville, and wanted to return to Nashville for the finale. So, I wrote all about the basement of the football arena, the office space, and the Titan's locker room. 

Then I toured the place. It's next to the river, so there is no basement! And the locker room floor is carpeted, which seemed like an odd choice--one that killed my masterfully described tile job.

The tour was great in its own right. We saw the TV control room and the media room, and talked to some great people up there. We got red tour stickers, hidden under my jacket in the photos. So after a quick edit, my book characters also picked up some red tour stickers for their visit.

We toured on a day when they were redoing the field. It costs around $300,000 to sod the field, and they do it about 10 times a year. That's some expensive grass, man.