It all began, fittingly enough, in a bar in Baja. I’d heard that the governor had recently bought a house, not far from property of close friends where I often came to write during the winter. And, sure enough, one night at the local “spot” above the beach, there he was hanging out at a long table.

When the opportunity arose, I went over and sat down across from him. I’d actually met him briefly several years earlier, soon after he decided not to run for a second term in Minnesota, when he came to Dallas for the 30th anniversary marking President Kennedy’s assassination. Having heard that Mr. Ventura was a student of books about the tragedy, I gave him a copy of mine, The Man Who Knew Too Much. So that was how I re-introduced myself in Baja, and it turned out he’d liked the book very much.

A few days later, my wife and I were walking along our beach when we ran into the governor and his wife, Terry. We invited them up for a drink, which turned into dinner in the course of a long and memorable evening. What a raconteur he was! The Venturas came over once more while I was in the Baja, at which point he mentioned his interest in writing a memoir about his years as governor – and, if I came back next year, maybe we might work on it together.

When I returned, he hadn’t forgotten. We embarked on a series of weekly 90-minute interviews, which I taped in his living room about 10 minutes down the road. I would then transcribe our wide-ranging discussions, which covered everything from insightful and often amusing anecdotes about being an independent governor in a two-party system, to his thoughts on the Iraq War and economics, and much in-between.

I found that Jesse Ventura not only possessed an agile mind, but a remarkably original one. He came up with things that I’d never heard anyone say before! He was “politics, with a twist,” you might say. And he sure didn’t pull any punches. The man was a breath of fresh air, as politicians go.

Over the course of six months, little by little the book came together. It was his idea to ultimately frame the story as a travel narrative, moving through reminiscences and rants as he and Terry made their long overland journey from Minnesota to southern Baja. We also decided to give Terry a real voice, with her perspective on what it was like to be the state’s First Lady adding a unique element to the story.

And it was his idea to create an ending for the book that would be, well, highly unusual and most likely extremely controversial as well. I won’t give it away here – but how could it be otherwise when you’re Jesse Ventura?

For me, the journey of assembling his story – of “becoming,” in imaginative prose, a 250-pound ex-wrestler who became a maverick governor – was, to say the least, a whole lot of fun.