Palahniuk was born in Pasco, Washington and raised in Burbank, Washington and Eastern Washington. started writing books when he was in his mid-thirties. His first book, "Insomnia: If You Lived Here, You'd Be Home Already", was never made into a book because he didn't think the story was very good. When he tried to write his next novel, "Invisible Monsters", publishers did not like it because they thought it was too scary. This made him work on his best known book, "Fight Club". He wrote it to try to scare the publisher even more for not publishing his book. Palahniuk wrote this story in his spare time. After first writing it as a short story, Palahniuk made it longer into a full book, which, surprising to him, was published.