I knew that playwright Simon Stephens would be a joy to work with I loved his writing and I was fairly confident that his bleak nihilism and fascination with random violence would steer him round the obvious pitfall of sentimentality. So, instead of waiting to be asked by the right person, we decided to ask the right person. Gradually we moved from thinking a stage version was a preposterous idea, to wondering if it might be possible, to being intrigued as to how someone might be able to do it.
It seemed impossible to me that such a radically first-person novel set entirely in the head of a single character could be translated into a radically third-person medium without doing it irreparable damage, but we were worn slowly down by the sheer volume of requests. Over the years my agent, my publisher and I had regular inquiries about theatrical rights to the novel. Whenever anyone asked me about the novel my answers felt less and less reliable and I felt less and less comfortable giving them. I could see how it might affect a reader, but I'd lost the ability to experience those feelings directly. I'd talked about The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time so much since its publication that most of my memories of writing the novel had been over-written by my memories of talking about writing the novel. I would have found it difficult writing this a year ago.