I broke the rules.
I mean, I knew I was doing it, but I felt like it was the right time to do it. Even if it gets me in a little bit of trouble.
Let me back up for a moment.
As a kid, I loved the books of Lois Duncan, but every single one left me sad when I reached the end. I was sad because the characters were gone from my life, like friends that moved away and I never heard from again. I wanted MORE of them. But they just disappeared.
When I discovered series mystery, it was a revelation. Characters that didn’t abandon me! They’d tell me their stories, disappear for a year or so, then come back and let me know what they’d been up to. It was like having an entire circle of semi-imaginary friends! (Okay, maybe completely imaginary, but they seemed real enough because I could count on them to show up regularly. Whatever.)
I sought out as many series’ as I could find. I was immediately drawn to Robert B. Parker’s series and devoured those books. I felt like I knew Spenser, Susan and Hawk. I could depend on them to show up and entertain me every so often. It was like they were inviting me into their lives and sharing details with me.
(Here is where I should also mention that I devoured the Sweet Valley High series in its entirety. I spent a large portion of my teenage allowance buying those paperbacks at the local bookstore and I would very much look forward to seeing what sort of shenanigans Jessica and Elizabeth got themselves into. Well, Jessica, anyway. Elizabeth was such a goody-goody. Oh, how I wanted Todd to break up with her, just to disrupt her perfect little life. I was always partial to Jessica. She was the bad girl and she seemed like so much more fun. But I’m not going to mention any of that because that would be horrifically embarrassing.)
So when I started writing, I always knew I was going to write a series where the characters would come back regularly. That’s what I liked to read, so that’s what I was interested in writing.
After several failed attempts, I finally stumbled upon a cast and setting and story that worked. Killer Swell was published in 2005 and in many ways, followed the blueprint put forth by Parker. I had my hero in my private investigator, his sidekick and a cast of regulars that could show up in each book. I fell in love with these characters and I loved writing about them. I envisioned being able to write about all of them for years to come.
But after I wrote the second book, I had this nagging feeling that I’d written a book that was too similar to the first. The story was different but there were so many similarities that it felt like just an extension of the first book. That didn’t sit well with me as the writer and creator of the series. The last thing I wanted was for readers to guess what was coming or – even worse – find the stories I was writing to be boring and predictable.
I needed to make some tough decisions.
For Liquid Smoke, I decided on a subject – the death penalty – and took the exact opposite point of view I hold in real life. I forced myself to consider the issue from the opposite side of the argument. It challenged me and resulted in what, I think, is by far the most interesting story I’ve ever written.
But it wasn’t enough.
I needed something else.
One of the key elements in any mystery or thriller is not knowing what comes next. It’s keeping the reader on edge, so they want to turn the next page. Everything has to be in play. No one can be safe. Yet, in most series mysteries, it’s easy to identify who will return in each book, no matter what kind of dangerous situations the author puts them in.
So I decided to break the rules.
One of my regular characters won’t be returning after Liquid Smoke.
It was hard to do. Brutal, really. It was a character I had put an enormous amount of time and energy into and had grown to love. But the opportunity within the story rose to eliminate the character and as much as I didn’t want to, I thought it made the story far more interesting and sends a message to readers of my future books – everything is in play.
Readers aren’t happy. I’ve already heard from them. I anticipated this. I’m glad they care and I hope it means they’ll never take my stories for granted and that they’ll always turn the page, holding their breath, wondering what comes next.
But sometimes even great characters must go away.
Sometimes an author has to break the rules.
Author Bio Jeff Shelby, author of Liquid Smoke, is the author of Killer Swell and Wicked Break.
For more information please visit http://jeffshelby.com, and follow the author on Twitter
