Christopher H. Jansmann's Blog

This will be the second November without NaNoWriMo; I’m having more trouble than I expected adjusting to the disappearance of something that was so integral to my growth as an author. Change, I suppose, is the only global constant; we move on, of course, and for me that means keeping to the same schedule I honed back when NaNoWriMo was in full swing. Deciding what to write during that monthlong sprint has always been a challenge, though; as I’ve said repeatedly, I have far more ideas than time to write, which is a good problem to have.

For years, November was the month that I wrote the next book in the Sean Colbeth series; that’s a holdover from his first novel being produced during the November period back in 2019. I’ve gone back and forth on whether that would be the case this year, and though I’ve begun prepping what is tentatively being titled Redemption, I think I am actually going to focus on finishing Midnight at Dawn. Much like the predecessor in that series, I’ve written more than half of it already and then set the darn thing aside. As Sean and Vasily are often wont to do when they get shelved, Kathryn Oliver has been reminding me with regularity that I’ve left her in something of a cliffhanger…

Excerpt from Midnight at Dawn showing a very unhappy Kathryn Oliver.

Yeah, probably not the best place to leave things.

Part of my problem, though, was that the next section — and, literally, the back half of the novel — takes place in literally uncharted waters for me. Up to that point in the book, it followed the same general format as Reflection in the Shadows: your basic police procedural with a touch of magic dusting everything. Midnight is taking that format and twisting it even more, and honestly, continuing down that path is incredibly scary (and not just for my characters). Enough time has passed now, though, that I think I’m with Kate on this one: I want to know how this story ends.

(Okay, I actually already know how it ends, but you see my point.)

So Midnight appears to have moved to the front burner and will be my focus starting in November; once that is complete, I’ll begin work on the next Sean novel, likely in late January. His next book is bubbling in my head almost in the same manner as Bliss, so I’m hopeful that it will come together fairly rapidly. Just pray that I don’t blow out my wrists in November.

One more thing before I go:

Emails to get a copy of Chosen Family will be sent out to subscribers beginning November 1. If you are reading this as part of my weekly email, you’re good to go; direct subscribers to my blog have been manually added to the newsletter system and should get the email. If you want to be absolutely sure, you can always subscribe just in case (though that might mean getting duplicate emails when this blog publishes).

I lied, one more thing:

For now, I’m going to maintain my extended social media presence. Recent pushback on the updated Terms & Conditions — especially the AI-website-scraping part — forced several of the big players to change course. However, while I’ll continue to crosspost on Facebook, Instagram and Tumblr, please know that my website (and this blog) will be my primary venue for getting the word out about my novels.

First, an update: by the time you read this, Chosen Family will be complete and I’ll be deep into the process of smoothing it out for publication. As of this writing, the timeline remains on track for it to appear a week or so prior to the release of Aftermath as a special bonus for subscribers; everyone else will have to wait until November 24th in order to purchase it. It’s a great time to sign up for one of my newsletters if you haven’t already — or to get your friends to do so. I really like how the story turned out and truly hope you’ll enjoy it too!

Second: yes, I will be releasing a compendium of all of the shorts at some point in 2027. Based on my personal schedule, I don’t expect it will be available until next summer at the earliest; once I have an exact date, I’ll post it here.

And third (finally): the wrist is much better, thank you for asking. I’m still limiting how much time I spend at the keyboard so I can get through my next writing sprint without interruption, though I expect to return to weekly outings here on the blog. Thanks for hanging in there with me.

I have a regular coffee get together with colleagues that started back when all of us were in the same department on campus nearly twenty years ago. How we managed to keep the thing going through COVID, job changes, retirements and cross-country moves is a testament to how connected the group is — and how, after all this time, we’ve kind of moved beyond just having been coworkers to the sort of deep friendship mutual experiences can often generate. I treasure the time we are able to spend together swapping stories from our collective past or catching up on what’s going on in our lives. These days, mostly due to geography, our sessions tend to be virtual, but every now and again the stars align such that we’re all in Tucson at the same time and can meet in person at one of our many favorite eateries.

One such session happened a few weeks back, and it was so much fun that we continued to chat right up until we got into our cars to drive away. I’ve heard talk of driveway moments, those pauses where time stands still while you finish listening to something; this was very much like that. I suspect we would have stood there for another hour had other cars not wanted our spots. In this case, the colleague who managed to retire first was recounting a story of how her granddaughter had flown cross-country to spend time with her biological father; as she was a minor, she’d gotten the royal treatment airlines provide for children unaccompanied by adults and had loved every moment of the attention.

The story reminded me of my own first time flying back in the early 1980s, a tale I’ve partially recounted in other blog posts. I had an uncle living just outside of Seattle who had offered to host me for a few weeks during the summer; I still remember getting up early on the day I left so we could drive to Boston for my flight. It was my first ever time flying anywhere, and I was so excited I’d kept the plane ticket on my desk so I could count down the days to my departure. (Historian’s note: these things used to be paper.).

While we’d picked my father up from the Portland Jetport on many occasions, stepping into Logan International was a far different experience. The bustle of people going ten ways at once was a bit overwhelming; I think I was in a bit of sensory overload when my parents finally handed me off to the flight attendant who was going to be responsible for my getting to the West Coast in one piece. They’d booked me on a cross-country flight to Seattle that stopped in Chicago, the idea being that I’d not have to worry about changing planes.

It was a sound idea until we landed in Chicago and the kindly flight attendant who’d been keeping an eye on me appeared at my row looking a little bit harried; only then was I told that my flight had been cancelled (!) and I had to get off the plane. Unsure of what any of that meant, I dutifully followed her into an airport that was impossibly bigger than Logan International, and then traipsed what felt like ten miles before we slipped through a side door and wound up in some sort of lounge. Inside were a handful of other crew members and one other kid — a girl near my age. I found out pretty quickly she’d also been on my same flight; together we waited while they sorted out the mess. I remember being able to call my parents to let them know what happened, then waiting some more before our flight attendant, finally smiling again, told us we had a new plane to catch.

Though it’s all a big vague to me now, somewhere in there I realized they put me on an airline that wasn’t the one I’d left Boston on; looking back on the entire thing, older me is a bit appalled at how trusting I was. What is crystal clear to me still, though, is that they’d put me and my new friend into First Class — in the row just behind the galley with an angle to see into the cockpit when the door was open. I even met the Captain and First Officer, both stately gentlemen who seemed genuinely interested in a kid from Maine on his first big adventure.

Once we were in the air, the in-flight service began; expecting the same sort of box lunch we’d gotten on the flight from Boston to Chicago (yes, they served real food to folks in Coach in those days), I was surprised when we first got a warm cloth to wash up with, then asked what we wanted for each course of the meal. I know I had a pretty decent soup followed by a steak with mashed potatoes that tasted fairly close to what my mother made. Dessert was some sort of chocolate cake (of course), followed by hot cocoa with tiny marshmallows. In short, I ate like a prince and immediately assumed all flights were like that — a thought I was disabused of a few weeks later when I flew back to Boston.

All these years later, I freely admit that was the high-water mark of traveling by air for me; the closest I’ve ever come to that level of white glove treatment was booking a room on the train to California, though as good as that was, it just isn’t quite as good as what I accidentally experienced as a kid. I’m certain some of my anxiety around traveling in general has its roots in that flight to Seattle being cancelled; still, it hasn’t stopped me from traveling when I have the chance to do so. I have learned, though, that I enjoy it far more when I’m traveling with someone, a lesson learned perhaps from meeting that other unaccompanied minor on that fateful first trip. Air travel itself isn’t really what it once was, but each time I step into an airport, I do smile fondly and recall just how exciting the experience can truly be. Even if you do try to plan for everything.

One last postscript: with recent terms-of-service changes being made by some of the larger social media platforms, I’m being forced to re-evaluate my use of them. I don’t quite know what the plan will be yet, but I do know that I am not willing to agree to use any of them if by doing so it means their AIs will be scraping my content for any purpose. If you’ve found me from one of those platforms and rely on them to let you know when I’ve posted something, I would encourage you to instead subscribe directly here.

I’m about a quarter of the way through my holiday story featuring Rosie Frankenhoffer and it dawned on me just how completely her personality has taken over the narrative. Like all of my characters, I have a pretty extensive backstory on our favorite millionaire author, one that is surprisingly full of tasty tidbits that generally never see the light of day. They inform how I write her, of course, since they form the various motivations behind her actions on the page. But I generally never get a chance to pull one or two of those to the forefront and hang a story on them; I mean, as much as I love her as a character, Vas is really the star of the series. It wouldn’t do to have her overshadowing him, now would it?

Still, I have left plenty of hints behind for how Rosie feels about Vas and Alex, and the guys have pretty much returned the favor by more or less adopting her. I love the dynamics of their relationship, especially the various contradictions inherent within it. Considering Rosie started off as a suspect in a murder investigation Vas was running, having a deep friendship develop from such an inauspicious beginning is incredibly unlikely. Yet that’s exactly what happened — despite the fact that I’d originally cast Rosie as, essentially, the guest star in Pariah with absolutely no intention of her reappearing in a future story. So I was just as surprised as Vasily when that call came in from her cardiologist during Ditched; the rest, as they say, is history, for I can no longer conceive of any Vasily Korsokovach novel without her appearance.

Having her as a featured player is another thing entirely. I had no idea she had so much to say; the words have been flowing faster than my still-recovering wrist is capable of handling, but slowing down seems nearly impossible. The theme of the tale is, unsurprisingly, how those we choose to include in our lives often become just as near and dear to us as our siblings and parents. It holds even more import for someone like Rosie who through her own choices finds herself flying solo in the twilight of her life. Realizing you need others is hard; accepting them, often harder. Holidays like Christmas always seem to make such thoughts even more poignant; maybe I’m alone in that, but I often think of those I’ve lost either to time or neglect, and always wonder what I should/could/might have done differently. Some of that is bleeding into Rosie’s reflections, but not all of it — she’s a strong personality, so I’ve pretty much just stepped out of the way and let her go.

If you’d like to be the first to get your hands on the story when it drops, be sure to subscribe to my blog or newsletter. I can’t wait to share the story with you and this journey as I write it. The manuscript should be done by the next time I post, so stay tuned.

And yes, the title is Chosen Family.

I’m still on my self-imposed writing wrist break, but that hasn’t stopped me from thinking about what I want to create once my enforced vacation ends. While much of that rumination has been around the Sean Colbeth book I’m planning on starting next month, an idea for a holiday story featuring Dr. Rosalia Frankenhoffer (a side character in my Vasily Korsokovach Investigates series) has also been percolating in the background; after I finished Baubles, I’d thought about doing something with Rosie nearly immediately, but wound up setting her aside to focus on the next novel instead.

That idea has kicked around for some time, obviously, and probably came back to the forefront of my considerations when I realized Silenced and Aftermath were going to bookend Christmas — at least, in the fictional timeline in which my universe exists. There was also this really wild, somewhat unplanned connection tying Silenced directly into Baubles, especially in the final chapter of the novel. It’s too good an opportunity and one that I am embracing completely. Besides, who doesn’t love a Hallmark-worthy Christmas tale? I never tire of that formula, no matter how times I’ve seen it on screen.

My plan is to get this novella written so it can be released simultaneously with Aftermath; loyal subscribers to my newsletter will get access to it earlier, so be sure to sign up (or have your friends sign up) well in advance of November. I’ll post updates on the blog too; stay tuned, for I’ll announce the title in my next entry.

It’s been a heck of a week.

Just after I finished my last entry for this blog, I felt that uncomfortable twinge in my wrist that told me it was probably time to reach for the brace again.  I thought I’d done pretty good since the last time I tweaked my wrist, but over the course of the summer, the effort on the last Vasily book combined with a fair amount of unexpected work for my day job meant I spent way too long on the keyboard.  That seems to have suddenly caught up with me, which essentially means I’ve got to take a little bit of time off to let everything rest.  It’s not my first choice, for sure, but if I have any hope of getting through the writing process for my next Sean book, I really do need to let my wrist rest again.

What does that mean practically?

Mostly that these blog posts are probably going to be a little bit shorter than normal for a bit and, as much as I can, dictated using the technology I have. They may not sound the same as normal – – there’s a fair amount of editing that goes on when typing, which is not as easy to do when you’re dictating – – but the flavor will still be there.  It also means the pre-work that I was planning on doing this month is probably going to slide slightly into October, though I don’t think that’s going to shift starting date of when I begin to work on my next manuscript.  

For a writer, it’s a bit frustrating. I do know better – – especially after what happened to me last year – – but clearly, I needed another flareup to be reminded that I need to take care of myself.

On the heels of that was hearing of the unexpected passing of Dolly Parton. It’s incredibly hard for me to imagine a world in which she’s not present; she was one of those musicians who has always been with me, from my kindergarten years all the way to today.  I can hear any song from her amazing catalog and know exactly what was going on in my life at that moment. And while I didn’t have the same shared life experiences, much of the raw emotion underpinning her music was incredibly relatable and, often, timely.  My wife and I were fortunate to see her live in Phoenix many years ago, and it was an experience that I will never forget. She was a consummate performer, an amazing human, and somebody I will miss terribly.  I’ve consoled myself by listening to everything I can get my hands on as well as be watching some of my favorite movies in which she starred.

Here’s hoping next week is a bit more positive…

Ah, Fall!

Since 2019, late August has become the gateway into autumn for me, mostly because it’s when I begin thinking about the next story in the Sean Colbeth series. If you’ve been following along with me for a while now, you’ll know that his first book — Blindsided — was written during the annual November Write A Novel Month, and mostly because of that connection, I reserve that month each year specifically to work on whatever adventure I have in store for my intrepid detective.

Blindsided was the first — and last — book I was able to write in four weeks. Since late 2020, I’ve more or less transitioned to taking at least two months to work on my first draft, which has allowed me to pace myself a bit better (and, occasionally, see my wife during those manic writing periods). I have to be more cognizant of my wrists now, too, so stretching the process slightly has been incredibly beneficial to ensuring I’m still able to produce at least one novel for each of my main detectives per year. As much as I would love to return to my COVID-era levels of output, the reality is that I just can’t keep to that pace these days — at least, not until I retire from my day job.

I spent a fair amount of this past weekend noodling what I want to do with this next book, tentatively entitled Redemption, including the theme(s) I hope to include. Since it is slated to take place just after the events of Aftermath, it feels important to me to deal with several of the threads I left hanging, including the fallout to Sean’s career over his abrupt leave of absence. I have a sense of where that will go and what that will do to drive his personal story forward; tied to that, of course, is the other major question: where the heck does he truly stand with Suzanne? There are some interesting hints at the end of Aftermath, and even more in the bonus chapter; while I don’t see a wedding in Sean’s future anytime soon, I do think there are some uncomfortable dinners and at least one come-to-Jesus discussion that will be very, very, very challenging to write.

It’s also been nearly three books since I’ve set a case in Maine, too. As weird as it might sound, I’m looking forward to dusting off my Village map and reacquainting myself with the colorful cast of background characters we’ve not seen in a while. I love my location, and though the choice to not set every case there has been intentional, I truly enjoy keeping a story inside the boundaries of Windeport. This case is shaping up to be one that takes me in a new direction, too; I’m going to get a chance to revisit actions Sean took in an earlier book, and perhaps see how they look to someone from the outside looking in — someone with a hidden agenda that connects to other secrets Windeport has been studiously keeping. There’s nothing I like to sink my teeth into more than the twists and turns that such a multilayered situation presents, though I’m not quite certain (yet) just how many layers exist. Since I’m in the blue sky phase of things, it’s still a bit hazy; over the next couple of weeks, I’ll sort through all the plot points I’d like to use and slim them down to the handful that will make a compelling read and a fun mystery to solve.

One pressing question for me that I’m not sure the next book will address is whether Sean keeps the Mustang he bought during the height of his midlife crisis. It’s not a terribly practical car for Maine, especially in the winter, but I also don’t see him actually admitting to anyone that he made such a mistake. My best guess is that it will likely wind up in storage for the rest of the season, replaced by his trusty unmarked SUV until such time as the grass begins to get green again. Besides, the last thing he would want is to expose any of that expensive vehicle to the chemicals used to treat roads in the height of winter. Then again, seeing Sean try and get his Mustang over a snow bank could make for a few lines of comedic gold.

We’ll have to see how it goes…

It’s not the sort of text message you want to get, especially when it comes a scant two days ahead of your annual sojourn to all things Star Trek. But when my friend’s message chimed into existence on my phone at an unexpected hour, I didn’t need the services of any of my detectives to correctly deduce my trip was in jeopardy. I called him back right away, of course, and the news was as grim as my gut had told me it would be: my buddy had picked up some sort of bug and was in no condition to drive seven hours to Sin City, let alone hobnob with our fellow fans. We talked through possibilities, but in the end, I had no desire to go solo nor anyone who could make the last minute trip with me. (As much as my wife loves me, and as willing as she was to be a pinch hitter, there was no way I could ask her to weather five full days of immersive Star Trek nerdism.)

So, after a little more than a decade of going, our run seems to have come to a rather abrupt end. We might try to go again next year, but by not attending this year, we’ve lost the seats we’ve had for nearly all that time. It’s possible we might be able to reclaim them if we hit the portal on the day tickets go on sale for next year, thought in all honesty, we’d already kind of informally decided that this year — the 60th anniversary of the franchise — might be our last hurrah. With no new shows in the pipeline, there’s an unusual level of uncertainty about what the future looks like anyway; maybe sitting back and waiting for the dust to settle might be the best option possible.

These things happen, of course, and usually at the worst possible moment. Ironically, the very first year we went to Las Vegas for the Star Trek, I was celebrating another first, namely a root canal that had taken place less than a week before we hopped on the plane. It wound up getting infected, so I was on a course of strong antibiotics that pretty much killed any hopes of sampling the exotic drinks that had been concocted specifically for the occasion. A few years later, my buddy tweaked his knee so badly we had to allow extra time for the long walk from tower for our room to the convention center. I suggested at one point that trip we rent one of those motorized chairs, but the look I got pretty much quelled that entirely.

The irony, of course, is that I’d opted for Star Trek over the biannual D23 convention Disney puts on in Anaheim; the dates are always on back-to-back weeks in the years they take place together, so it’s a tough double bill both financially and in terms of vacation time. Sitting at home when I was supposed to be in Vegas gave me this weird moment in time to consider how much my two core fandoms are in a constant war for my attention; that led to a far stranger realization that my love of Disney, by definition, covered an amazing panoply ranging from classic animation to movies to theme parks, each of which spanned multiple genres. Star Trek is pretty layered all by itself, but when stacked up against the House of Mouse, you have to admit the library is just a wee bit more impressive.

Plenty of things have come and gone in my fandoms over the years, but these two have remained with me. My love of them has bled slightly into my writing; Vasily is a huge Disney fan, of course, and Kate Oliver is a die hard Trekkie. And while Kate doesn’t strike me as the sort of personality who would want to attend a convention, I can completely see Vas dragging Alex to something like D23 and then spending hours dissecting the announcements over what new films or theme park rides were announced. Alex is fairly new to that intense level of fandom — he’d visited Disneyland as Tucson kid a few times, but that was about the size of it prior to meeting Vas — so it’s been a bit of adjustment for him to get acclimated to Vasily’s obsession. Then again, who doesn’t like a good pair of mice ears and a warm churro? (Or soft pretzel?)

Maybe next year will begin a new cycle, or perhaps something else will appear that will draw us to it. We’ve talked of going to New York to see the official Star Trek Original Series Set Tour, or sneaking into either Wonderfest or the IPMS Annual Convention. All of those sound like fun, and after a decade of heading to Vegas, maybe it’s time for a change.

Stay tuned.

Ah, August!

That can only mean one thing: time for my buddy and I to pack up our Starfleet uniforms and make our annual sojourn to Las Vegas for STLV (formerly know as the Official Star Trek convention). This year, we’re celebrating the 60th anniversary of the show, with actors and writers and anyone else even tangentially connected to the franchise over those decades slated to appear.

I’ve been a fan since my father introduced me to the series as a child; he was the one to bring me to the theater in 1979 to see the Enterprise proudly (and gracefully) sail out into the unknown anew. My love of the optimistic future all iterations of the show depict is a touchstone I find myself reaching for when this reality begins to get a little bit unnerving. Connecting with fellow fans annually has become another way for me to reset and recharge my own fervent belief that at some point the universe will self-correct into a timeline where people live the ideals behind I.D.I.C.

My 1/350 scale model of the Starship Enterprise

As of the date I’m writing this, the schedule for the convention hasn’t been published; oddly, the list of what’s happening always seems to be a closely guarded secret until the absolute last moment. There is a bit of melancholy undergirding this year, though, as it’s the first time in nearly a decade that no new Star Trek series or movie is in production. Our fear that the franchise might have suddenly sputtered to a stop is quite real; then again, for a series that was ignominiously cancelled after just three seasons back in the late 1960s, the fact it ultimately spawned twelve* additional series and thirteen* feature-length movies might give one faith the end is not, in fact, near. Maybe… just maybe… there will be an announcement of something new while we are in Las Vegas; I happened to be there when Patrick Steward announced his return as Captain Picard, so there is precedent.

Hope (and Star Trek) springs eternal.

* in case you were curious as to the series and movies, here they are, courtesy of Wikipedia and startrek.com.

SeriesYearSeasonsThe Original Series19663The Animated Series19732The Next Generation 19877Deep Space Nine19937Voyager19957Enterprise20014Discovery20175Picard20203Lower Decks20205Prodigy20212Strange New Worlds20225Starfleet Academy20262MovieYearStar Trek: The Motion Picture1979Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan1982Star Trek III: The Search for Spock1984Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home1986Star Trek V: The Final Frontier1989Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country1991Star Trek Generations1994Star Trek: First Contact1996Star Trek: Insurrection1998Star Trek: Nemesis2002Star Trek2009Star Trek Into Darkness2013Star Trek Beyond2016

Like most of the world, I’ve been glued to the World Cup this summer. I’ve mentioned before that soccer — or, as Alejandro would patiently point out to me, fútbol — was one of the core sports I messed around with as a kid; that experience learning how to play gave me an appreciation for the game, and an desire to watch the best players in the world any time they are showcased. Admittedly, I don’t pay as much attention to the year-round leagues here in the States or abroad; I keep tabs as best as I can with the various sports new apps I frequent, enough that I can more or less recognize the Big Names when they make an appearance at the World Cup.

Multiple summers playing soccer and at least one high end camp didn’t turn me into the sort of high-demand athlete our community’s age group teams were looking for, though I did enjoy the experience. Swimming was more my thing, anyway, but honestly running up and down the field at full tilt could be pretty exhilarating; I tended to play defensive positions, and was at least passible enough to have spent a fair number of minutes out there. Years later I watched my other two brothers truly excel at the sport, which was an exhilaration of an entirely different kind. One of them was also a goalkeeper, which quite honestly made the experience incredibly nerve wracking. It helped to remind myself that the ball had to get through nine other players, but at the end of the day every goal scored against him hurt worse than pouring peroxide on an open wound.

Yes, seriously.

At least two of my characters have a backstory tied to soccer. Alex, of course, is the first one who comes to mind; Vas has noted multiple times that his partner follows the sport avidly, and might even have a jersey or two from his favorite players hanging in their closet. Tenoch Vasquez is perhaps the more notable one, though, as his backstory discloses how he was destined to be a professional soccer player right out of high school; his dreams get completed derailed when life (and a certain Mesoamerican god) intervenes. That is a touchstone threaded throughout Reflection in the Shadows and the sequel, Midnight at Dawn; his lingering regret at the road not taken colors his outlook on life in ways that haven’t been completely apparent to him. I’ve only begun to scratch away at that turmoil, though what I’ve found already has been intriguing.

I’ve not considered the sort of player Tenoch would have been, ironically. As tempting as it would be to make him a striker, he feels more like he’d have been an attacking midfielder – the sort of position that demands a crafty person who can play through adversity in order to get the ball into a better position for scoring. His personality supports that kind of idea, frankly, but I’ll percolate on the thought for a bit and see if it bears fruit in Midnight. He’s top of mind right now as I delve back into the manuscript, so anything is possible. Especially when there’s magic involved.

One of my favorite poems is the classic The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost. I’ve read it so many times over the years, the words have come to feel like good friends who visit often, friends of the sort you share a hot cup of coffee with while curled up on a couch, chatting endlessly about everything and nothing. As I’ve grown older, I’ve found the poem increasingly poignant, especially when I consider, on balance, how the various forks in my own life have gone. The final lines have always resonated with me:

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

The Road Not Taken, by Robert Frost. Full text: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44272/the-road-not-taken

There’s a lot going on in that poem, of course, but I’ll leave the critical analysis of the deeper meaning to those far better qualified to take on such tasks. For me, the singular observation that going your own way is often more rewarding than following the beaten path feels like validation for many of my own life choices — and the sort of guidance I’ve used when it comes to shaping the lives of my characters. Part of being a good detective (in my view) is that innate desire to poke around in corners of people’s lives that most would ignore; they also have a willingness to look under rocks or wander into the wilderness without so much as a map in search of the truth, something the wider populace would be unlikely to do.

They could play it safe and color inside the lines, of course. I haven’t always myself and, honestly, there can be consequences when you step out of bounds. Younger me didn’t always understand that; older me has adroitly taken those lessons and used them to craft stories that feel relatable and, hopefully, believable.

Sean and Vasily have had their own share of fork-ish decisions; Sean is the most recent, of course. When Sean appears in Orlando driving a midlife crisis-Mustang in Silenced, it’s fairly clear he’s not dispassionately considering his options. That becomes a more detailed thread in the book I just completed writing, Aftermath; Sean has to literally figure out which one of those roads he should take. Does he keep going as an investigator? Does he quit? Or is there a middle path he’d not yet considered? I brought all of that into the novel and wove it into the overarching mystery — for Sean’s life choices are very much tied to his identity as a detective. Like so many of us, he’s not sure where the line is between what he does and who he really is. One can’t be considered in isolation from the other.

Aftermath is a fun read, and I think resolves rather nicely. Sean gets to grow even more, adding more nuance to an already interesting personality. I’m already thinking ahead to his next adventure; work will begin on that in earnest come November. I’m going to take the rest of the summer to wrap up Midnight at Dawn, which I’ve left languishing on my in-progress folder for far too long. Dipping back into the magical realm for a bit will be a nice respite from the reality-based fiction I usually do; I’m looking forward to shifting gears for a bit, though it’s been long enough that I need to go back and re-read the 40k words I have so far just to put me back into the Santa Marcel mindset.

Apropos of something, I am also working on a short mystery set in the Windeport universe. Once complete, it will be a freebie for newsletter subscribers; the hope is to have it ready in early September. Be on the lookout!