Christopher H. Jansmann's Blog

I spent part of this past weekend putting the finishing touches on Belie, due out in a few weeks.  Most of this effort was spent tweaking the cover art and then scanning the manuscript for any last-minute, egregious errors that might come back to haunt me later in the series.  I have long lived in fear of accidentally doing x in a prior novel, only to claim yactually happened; so far, I’ve thankfully managed to avoid that particular misstep – but only because I obsess the way I do over ensuring my continuity remains intact.

This novel is the eight in the Sean Colbeth Investigates series.  I am still coming to terms with the fact that I’ve gotten this far, and that the character remains popular.  Belie, oddly, represents something of a turning point for Sean, too; it’s the first major case he’s taken on since transitioning to his new role with the State Police, and as I’ve noted elsewhere, we wind up with a front row seat as he struggles with the adjustment.  There are significant differences between being the Police Chief of a small waterfront village and a statewide commander of a crime taskforce, differences that at the end of the day have my detective wondering what the heck he was thinking when he took the job in the first place.  Will it grow on him?  Will he grow to like it and subsequently thrive?  I think both of those questions remain open by the end of the novel, forcing me to address them in his next novel.  Due out in 2026, the tentatively titled Aftermath has a lot to deal with in that regard; many of the decisions Sean has made in the past eight novels start to catch up to him, and not all of them are positive.

Before you think I’m heading down a path of breaking Sean in some way, let me hasten to assuage those fears; Sean has always been Sean, and is not a candidate for becoming one of those detectives that is haunted by prior acts.  I do see him as completely human, though, albeit one who often still fails to grasp the reality existing outside of his investigator bubble.  Every action Sean has taken over the course of the series put him on a path that I only vaguely saw all the way back in Blindsided.  Threads that were always there are now being tugged, leading to more questions that might have difficult answers.  And that’s just in his personal life; throw in a good mystery on top of that and you can see that I have the beginnings of an excellent stew I can’t wait to share with you next year.

Getting the band back together was also a priority for this next novel; it’s been a while since Vas assisted with an investigation, so it’s been fun to write scenes for the duo again.  Sean does make something of a cameo in the next Vasily Korsokovach book, Silenced, but it’s confined to just a few chapters; in Aftermath, the two are once more joined at the hip, though with the added benefit of both having had to work without the other for some time now.  I miss the witty repartee between them; in the new novel, that feels even more on point given the personal issues Sean is dealing with when we finally see him again.  

What are those, you ask?

Well, for starters Sean decides to drive to Florida to make peace with his estranged father.  If you have been playing along at home, you might have a good sense of how well that went – and what fallout might result from the visit.  And while you already know Sean is struggling with his new role as Commander, Major Crimes, you might not realize that all is not completely well between him and Suzanne; when we last saw them in Solitude, the proverbial hatchet had been buried, but events in Belie conspire to open old wounds that Sean is ill-prepared to deal with.  How he gets through that is as much a part of the plot of Belie as the murder – and sets up rather nicely what is yet to come in Aftermath.

2026 is going to be a fun year. 

I had another chance to take the train out to see my friends in California recently; unlike the last time I visited, this trip was very much spur of the moment and (by necessity) needed to be low budget, so I booked a standard Coach ticket for the roundtrip.  I admit to having had some trepidation about that arrangement, since my most recent trips had been with sleeping accommodations; once you’ve experienced all of the perks of traveling in that fashion, it’s hard to ignore those working their way through the three-course dinner two cars in front of you while you stare out across the darkening landscape wondering what might have been.  As it turned out, I was pretty comfy in those wide, reclining seats they offer in Coach — and, in fact, I had quite a bit more room to get up and move around than I’d had in the small Roommette.  Still, the chair didn’t recline to a complete bed, and stepping over the person on the aisle to make a midnight run to the restroom was more interesting than it should have been, but all in all, I had a pleasant experience that I would be willing to repeat again in the future.  

A view of the grand windows in the waiting room at Los Angeles Union Station

There’s something incredibly magical about traveling that way, too.  The boarding process on Amtrak is relatively low key when compared to the crowd-the-gate-so-I-can-get-my-carryon-into-the-overhead-compartment competition I often witness when flying back East to see my family.  Perhaps it’s the more stately manner in which the train pulls up to the station that gets the better angels to appear, or maybe the echoes of a bygone era give people a moment to reflect on the fact that travel once used to be a fun adventure we looked forward to embarking on.  Whatever it is, I found myself completely relaxed and ready to start my long weekend when I stepped off the platform in Los Angeles — and, conversely, more than a little sad when I found myself back there just a few short days later to return home.  

Another view of the waiting room at Los Angeles Union Station

Traveling the rails is not something I was able to do much of while growing up back East.  Passenger rail didn’t return to Southern Maine until long after I’d moved to Arizona; while I’d taken the subway around Boston quite a bit, the T is not quite the same as a full-blown passenger train with all of the trimmings.  I know for certain that’s why I had a passenger train as a central component to the plot in Requiem; Vasily booked a room on the Sunset Limited nearly two years before I actually did, so I had quite the bout of jealousy.  He was fortunate enough to get the upgraded sleeper, the sort of cozy little room that you often see in the movies set during the Golden Age of passenger rail, something I’ve not had the budget for myself.  (Perhaps — and this is just a thought — this sort of profligate spending on the part of the Rancho Linda Police Department might be a contributing factor to their ongoing budget crisis. Someone should talk to them about that.)  Since I’ve cleverly stationed Alejandro’s mother in Tucson, I suspect we’ll get more chances to see Vasily traveling in that manner in the future, especially now that I’ve done it a few times myself and have more of a sense of the sights, sounds and even smells that go along with the experience.  Having the chance to finally walk around Union Station in Los Angeles in person increased my appreciation for what used to go into such structures, and why they were so important to the towns and cities they served; seeing how many people still rely on rail to get around gave me hope that someday, maybe, we’ll once more have as robust a system as other countries.

One can hope.

I’ve talked a few times now about how dark the Sean Colbeth novel, Belie, is.  Much of that comes from the horrific nature of the crime that anchors the plot, that being the mass shooting of patrons at a local pizzeria in a small mill town.  It took me a long time to convince myself that I could write such a scene, let alone delve into the psychological morass of what might have led to it occurring in the first place.  More than once as I wrote that novel I felt like Sean and I had merged personalities, for each time I sent him back into that scene, I could sense our mutual reluctance to face it again.  I would never have believed something I wrote could have traumatic aftereffects, but it has literally taken me nearly a year (and two books without Sean as the primary protagonist) to feel mentally ready to work with him as a main character again.

And what a mess I get to work with!

When I saw him last, he’d joined Vasily in Orlando to help (in a minor way) on a case tying back to one in Rancho Linda; Silenced picks up just a few days after the ending of Belie, which meant Sean was still very much trying to pick up the pieces of both his professional career and his private life.  Vas senses something is off about his best friend, but the pressures of the case don’t allow him much time to deal with it – which is another way of saying that I, as the author, punted everything to the next Sean novel.  Now, as I begin to pull together the threads of what will become the ninth book in that series, I can kind of think I did myself a favor; as much as I love Vasily and his propensity for helping Sean, we really need to see how this all works out from Sean’s point of view.

There are other threads that I need to tug on in this book, too.  With Sean in Florida for a bit, I’ll have an official chance for him to finally get some sort of closure with his father – or, if I’m feeling particularly wild, maybe instead craft a wider tear in that relationship.  So much is open ended on that, even for me; looking back at how Sean was treated in Blindsided – namely, that his father threw him out of his apartment for the perception of being romantically involved with Vasily – there is stuff to mine there, hints about the kind of man Sean’s father is (or has become since the death of his wife).  It also gives me another wonderful opportunity to paint in more color for the background of my character, adding flavor to an already complicated individual who continues to find ways to surprise me.

Then there is Suzanne.  I won’t go into much at this point on her since there are significant events in Beliethat reshape the contours of her relationship with Sean that I don’t want to spoil; suffice it to say, Sean is flying solo when we see him in Orlando with Vasily, though not without a ton of baggage and a heart that is beginning to think love doesn’t exist for a person like him.  It does, of course, especially since I’m the sort of author that always gravitates toward a happy ending, but it might take a bit more turmoil before we get there.  Turmoil that might involve a new character that appears in Silenced, one that makes no secret of their romantic interest in our former Olympic Swimmer.

And what about his job?  Nearly from the beginning of the series, I’ve had this sense that though Sean is very good at what he does as an investigator, he chafes at being micromanaged.  Things went downhill with his position in Windeport when he was unable to read the political tea leaves properly – or willing to accommodate the Village Council in ways that felt patently unreasonable, unethical or immoral.  That meant there were plenty of warning bells going off when I allowed him to accept the position with the Maine State Police; the first case in Solitude went fairly well, but there he was on his own working a murder on an isolated island.  Belie forces him to work within the constrictions of the organization while under the very public scrutiny mass shootings generally receive.  He does his thing, of course, and it’s not much of a spoiler for me to say the case resolves satisfactorily – for everyone but Sean.

Which lands him in Florida.  On leave.  

Sounds like a tantalizing start, don’t you think?

My cupboard of story ideas is overflowing, but selecting just the right mix of ingredients for this next story has been rather hard.  I think I’ve got the proportions just right and am now prepping to begin writing in October.  Stay tuned!

Also in October: I’ve decided to release a snippet of my next Vasily Korsokovach book sometime during the month.  If you are a newsletter subscriber, be on the lookout for a special email containing the link; after you’ve read it, let me know what you think.

Unlike any of my characters, I am not an athlete.

Yes, I swam competitively for a few years when I was a teenager, and I did flirt with both soccer and baseball at earlier points in my life.  But somewhere along the way, I wound up taking the fork in the road that had me spending more time as a service-oriented volunteer instead of spending hours in the pool to shave off a few seconds from my best time.  While there is a part of me that lives vicariously through my fictious Olympians, that was just never the path I was ever destined to take.

I continue to swim for fitness reasons, though, for my career is sufficiently stressful enough to need some sort of outlet that can help to balance out everything.  It’s sort of hard to describe the Zen-like aspect of watching the tiles glide by beneath you as you work your way from one end of the pool to the other; when I was an age-group swimmer, I often thought of it as monotonous and boring.  Now, like both Sean and Vasily, I find it has become part of the ritual of getting to that blissful meditative state that can shake loose whatever it is that is currently of concern.

My wife has long been a runner.  Her grace as she glides over the pavement has always brought a special smile to my face, for it is truly something special to behold.  When she suggested I join her for an outing – extolling the very virtues I espouse over swimming — I repeatedly demurred; the fear that a swimmer such as myself could never cover the same distance on land was real, and one that I didn’t overcome until the mid-2000s.  

What changed, you asked?  In short, Disneyland.  

Paula signed up for a 5K hosted by the Happiest Place on Earth and as I cheered her on, I realized the race looked like a ton of fun.  Organized as only Disney can, they had music and characters and theming that elevated the simple act of running to something else entirely.  Having the racecourse plotted through the parks was just the icing on the proverbial cake.

So, I began to run.  Slowly at first, then increasing both speed and distance until I found what was my comfort zone.  Paula encouraged me to register with her for a three-run series hosted by a local organization here in Tucson, partly so we could run together but also so I could experience what it was like to navigate a course with a bunch of other people at the same time.  That proved to be especially prudent, for I’d had no idea the sort of dynamics required when sharing the road with a crowd; by the time I finally arrived in Walt Disney World in 2017 to run my first Disney race, I felt like I was ready to tackle whatever I faced.  The two of us had a great time in Orlando, and soon, other runDisney races appeared on our schedule; I even began contemplating tackling the half-marathon distance – and, perhaps, qualifying for the special Coast-to-Coast award if I did a half in both Anaheim and Orlando.  Things were looking spectacular as we wrapped up another 10K at Walt Disney World in January 2020.

And then, COVID hit.

The world shut down, and with it, our next race in 2021 at WDW.  During that first year, the pools I normally used also remained closed, so running became the only way for me to try and decompress from the incredible events we were forced to live through.  Those early morning runs allowed me to keep enough of an even keel to deal with the insanity of trying to keep a top ten business school functioning technologically while working out of my living room.  They also allowed me to hang on to the dream that I might yet run that half at Disney – someday, perhaps, when the world reopened.  

Which of course it did.

Fast forward to this past weekend; after years of effort and twenty-two weeks of focused training, I completed my first ever half at Disneyland during their Halloween runDisney weekend.  And just to emphasize how all-in I’ve become on this running thing, I ran the 5K and 10K as well – which, according to the spiffy t-shirt I received, winds up being slightly more than 19 miles in total over three days.  Toss in a few days wandering the park and, yes, there are parts of me that I didn’t know could even be sore – but I’ve also never been happier at hitting a personal goal.  (It wasn’t particularly fast, mind you, but I did clock in at 2:30 on the half.  Not bad for a first timer.)

I’m not done, of course.  I’m getting ready for the back half of that goal now, that being running the same three distances in Orlando later in October.  The Wine and Dine Weekend was one of the first ones Paula and I raced together years ago, so there is something wonderfully poetic about it being the coda for this leg of my running journey.  I learned quite a bit during my first outing in Anaheim, but also know Florida is a different critter.  I’ll have to lean into my training and, as the race announcers told us last weekend, be at peace with whatever pace I muster.  That sounds like great advice no matter the sport. 

The back half of the summer months tend to be when I take the lion’s share of my vacation time; with school out and the students away, it tends to be the quietest time to slip out from behind my desk and indulge in a tiny bit of self-care.  Giving myself permission to take time off has been a work in progress for most of my professional career; having grown up in New England, I have this strange, nearly Puritanical streak that often makes me feel guilty for being away from the office – which has led to this crazy problem of getting to the end of each year with nearly too much vacation time to roll over into the next year.  

This is the first summer where I deliberately scheduled more time off than normal; the result has been this strange sense of peace going into the start of our Fall semester, something I’ve not felt for some time.  It also gave me a chance fully recover from the tendonitis that sprouted back in June; while I would have preferred to have spent the summer toiling away at one of my many writing projects, the forced downtime allowed me to continue to refine the stories I am planning on telling, though I still don’t consider myself that sort of planner.

One result of all of this rumination is that an idea I’d been toying with has become a central touchstone for the sequel I’m writing to Reflection in the Shadows.  I won’t spoil too much from that novel when I divulge that one of the main characters, Ocelot, works on behalf of an ancient Mesoamerican deity; while I don’t delve into that too much in the first book, I touch on the notion that there were other deities in the pantheon and that not all of them had humanity’s best interests in mind.  I’d originally come to that point to underscore the ultimate climax of the first novel, but when I began working on the sequel, I started to wonder if the gods were actually motivated by self-interest.  And if they were, what would be important enough for a deity to (literally) move heaven and earth to get what they want?

It was too tantalizing not to address.  So I did.

The results have been unexpectedly interesting to me as a writer; while the core of the story remains a traditional police procedural mystery, this ability for me to sprinkle in a little bit of fantasy opens the door to go in some really cool directions.  I’m only about a third of the way into this manuscript so more details to follow, but the plan remains to have this wrapped up by the end of September so I can begin work on my next Sean Colbeth novel in November.  That novel has been gestating long enough that it’s nearly ready for college, frankly, so I’m quite ready to begin getting those words into the word processor.

Some time ago while out with my wife walking our dog, we passed a house in the next subdivision over that happened to have the exact late model New Beetle that I have long imagined Alejandro drives. The brilliant yellow exterior has faded somewhat in the harsh Arizona sun, but just about everything else is exactly as I’ve described it, right down to the small spray of flowers sprouting from the dashboard vase. I couldn’t help but point that out to my long-suffering wife; she nodded and humored me as I waxed poetic about a vehicle I’ve never actually driven. Part of the fun of being a writer is, essentially, living in a world of make believe — though one that is, apparently, highly specific and extremely unique.

The perils of being an author, I suppose.

As we continued our walk, I thought a bit about why I had saddled Alex with such a vehicle; like everything else that happens when a character springs to life, I suppose it was a natural extension of the kind of person he is. The cars my characters drive do match who they are; Vas has always been a Chevrolet Camaro kind of guy, whereas Sean (spoiler alert!) will turn out to have a thing for Ford Mustangs. Tenoch is the latest addition to this list, and he finds Dodge Chargers more to his liking. These three seem infatuated with muscle cars — cars that reflect one or more aspects of their personalities.

And yet, Alex has a Volkswagen, one that could almost be considered a sub-compact. It’s a very practical car, especially for a guy who (until he met Vas) found himself drifting from city to city, looking for a place to finally call home. There’s also a style component here, too, for Alex has a thing for design; clean lines mean something to him, as does the slight echo that particular model has to the Mid-century Modern affinity for curves. Later versions of the New Beetle have never appealed to Alex, which probably means he’ll be driving his baby until the wheels fall off (and maybe further).

You’d be right to wonder if I had ever wanted a VW myself, and the short answer is — yes! When I was starting my junior year in college and looking for a dependable ride to replace the stalwart but fading 1977 Chevy Chevette I’d been driving since high school, I had a chance to test drive a Jetta and fell in love with how the car handled. The windshield was a little weird, and I felt a bit like I was sitting in a hole while behind the steering wheel, but other than that, the thing drove like a dream. It was also wildly out of the price range for someone trying to make ends meet while going to college.

Later that same year, I wound up finding something I could afford at the little Saturn dealership that had opened up a year or two earlier. Completely infatuated with the strange spinoff company from General Motors, I let go of my VW crush and committed to a long term relationship with a quasi-sporty SL2; that car lasted through my first two jobs after college and would have made the move to Arizona with me had I not gifted it to my youngest brother.

Funny side note: I’ve often joked with him that the clutch going out when he drove it on his first major cross-country trip was direct retribution for him pressing every god-damned button on the dashboard the day I drove it home from the dealership. I was furious at the time — hell, I hadn’t even put a hundred miles on it at that point — but now it remains one of my fondest memories of him.

When August appears on the horizon, it means a few things to me; not only is the summer break for our students nearly over, it’s also time to pack up my Vulcan ears and cosplay outfits so I can head to Las Vegas for my annual weeklong immersion of all things Star Trek. This year seems to have snuck up on me a bit faster than normal, partly because my usual touchstones for the calendar were missing. Without NaNoWriMo around to remind me of the quarterly writing sprints, my writing periods have organically expanded to become just about any time I feel like it; as late as last year, I used their early summer writing challenge as the veritable warning bell that it was getting close to departure time. This year, I find myself barely a third of the way into my latest project, one that I had planned on finishing by the end of July.

So much for keeping on target!

No matter. As my wife continually reminds me, I am the only one putting artificial deadlines in place; the more important part is the writing itself, and honestly, spreading it out a bit more has been the right (write?) thing to do — especially as I continue to recover from this bout of tendinitis. The last thing I want is to be sidelined again for any length of time.

Save for the first year when we flew, my buddy and I drive up to Las Vegas the day before the event gets underway. Partly that was practical, for not only is it far less expensive, it also provides more space to bring back any goodies we might find in the vendor area; it’s also extremely relaxing, for the part of Arizona we cross to get to Nevada is one of the most scenic areas of the state. Sooner or later it will morph into a future interstate, but for now, it’s miles of sloping road snaking its way through a massive Joshua tree forest bookended by hills dotted with majestic saguaro.

This is our ninth year going to the convention — save for the pandemic year, we’ve managed to be annual attendees since 2015. I wasn’t entirely sure that the content would change enough from year to year to keep us engaged, but the world of Star Trek has expanded immensely since the reboot movies and the launch of Star Trek: Discovery. While I’m a bit sad that we seem to be slipping into a period where there will be less new content, there’s so much to cover that the week often goes by faster than I expect. Since it’s also the thirtieth anniversary of Star Trek: Voyager, there will be a special emphasis on that show this year, with almost all of the original cast scheduled to appear. I do come away with something new each time we go; it also tends to refresh my sense of optimism in humanity, something I am sorely in need of this year.

I think it was the 2023 edition — the year I came back with COVID — that I picked up one of my intriguing items. Shortly before he passed away, Michael Pillar wrote a book about crafting the screenplay for Star Trek: Insurrection; it’s one of my favorite movies in the pantheon, and to my great delight, his widow happened to be in the vendor hall that year selling copies. I picked it up immediately and spent the nights after the convention eagerly flipping through its pages, discovering all that goes into writing for the screen. Some of what I read surprised me, but quite a bit of it didn’t; it was nice to know the struggles of pulling together all the threads that go into a plot are common among all of us in this craft, no matter the budget.

Mary Chapin Carpenter released a new album this month; to my great horror, I was unaware that she had one in the pipeline, or even that she had a tour date here in the Old Pueblo back in June. I discovered these major oversights while surfing her website looking for song lyrics; I couldn’t do much about having missed the concert, but the new album (and one that she released in January) immediately landed in my iTunes library as quickly as the payment could get processed. Personal History has been on deep repeat ever since; it’s another master class in how amazing writing paired with the perfect music can evoke the rawest of emotions — across the entire spectrum.

I’ve never tried my hand at writing music, but I often use music as part of my writing. Artists such as Mary Chapin Carpenter provide me with the right kind of background when I’m trying to reach for a certain feeling in a given passage or section of a novel; perhaps it’s a bit of a cheat for me, but when I need to hang on to something visceral while a character is dealing with what I’ve thrown at them, the perfect soundtrack can help to keep me in that space. A happy side effect of that has been a strange intimacy with the poetry of crafting a song; I remain in awe of anyone who is capable of rhyming in perfect time with the beat.

(I have so many questions! Does the music come first? Or the lyrics? I think the answer is often both — or either, depending on the artist.)

In any event, listening to Personal History made me think back to my post from January of last year where I outlined some of the music that has become the soundtrack of my novels. Looking it over once more, I found myself smiling that not much has changed in the eighteen months since; I’ve added a few new tracks, perhaps, but the overall balance is still the same. I thought it would be fun to put them all together in a single list this time out, including some of the new material that trickled in with the addition of Kate and Tenoch.

These are presented in no particular order (and, honestly, is just a fraction of what is on my writing playlist).

Background/EmotionalPeter WhiteCataloniaLight of DayChasing the DawnBueno FunkCaravan of DreamsVenice BeachMindi AbairOooh-Aah (Catalina)3rd Street PromenadeEverything’s Gonna Be All RightNothing Ever Hurt Like YouTrue BlueBloomMichael BroeningSummer In BlueLet It BreatheCarol AlbertSunshine YellowPerfect SundayOn My WayMichael LingtonShow MeBrian SimpsonWhat I’m Waiting ForNathan MithcellMinha AmadaNelson RangellThe Way To YouBrian CulbertsonCome On UpLet’s Get StartedLet’s GoStep Into LoveDance With Me TonightFly HighNilsCaught in the GrooveMary Chapin CarpenterThe Way I FeelWhat You Look ForThe Age of MiraclesSomething Tamed, Something WildThe Long Way HomeAlmost HomeTranscendental ReunionSoul CompanionBetween Here and GoneIt Must Have HappenedOn With The SongThe Hard WayI Feel LuckyStones In The RoadThis ShirtBitter EnderHold EverythingTrisha YearwoodThey Call It Falling For A ReasonEverybody KnowsBelieve Me, Baby (I Lied)There Goes My BabyDolly PartonHere You Come AgainLove Is Like A ButterflyThe Bargain StoreBig Dreams and Faded JeansTime For Me To FlySara EvansPerfect21 DaysReal Fine Place To StartAs IfCéline DionSet My Heart On Fire (I’m Alive x And The Beat Goes On)That’s The Way It IsI Drove All NightA New Day Has ComeI’m AliveAdeleSkyfallSet Fire To The RainWillie NelsonMaria (Shut Up And Kiss Me)Mendocino County LineAlison Krauss & Union StationThe Lucky OneGravityRestlessCrazy As MeRoseanne CashBurn Down This TownDreams Are Not My HomeModern BlueReba McEntireWhoever’s in New EnglandFear of Being AloneOne Promise Too LateThe Heart Won’t LieBackground/SoundtracksStar Trek: The Motion Picture (Jerry Goldsmith)Main Title/Klingon BattleFloating OfficeThe EnterpriseLeaving DrydockThe MeldThe Thomas Crown Affair (Bill Conti)Black & White x 5Goodnight / Breaking & EnteringGlider Pt. 1Glider Pt. 2Action/High TensionStar Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (James Horner)Surprise AttackKirk’s Explosive ReplyCaptain Terrell’s DeathBattle in the Mutara NebulaGenesis CountdownStar Trek III: The Search for Spock (James Horner)Prologue and Main TitleThe Mind-MeldStealing the EnterpriseSunset on GenesisBird of Prey DecloaksThe Black Hole (James Barry)Zero GravityThe Door OpensDurant Is DeadInto The HoleStar Trek, Volume 2 (Original Television Soundtrack) (Gerald Fried & Sol Kaplan)What Is Doomsday MachineGoodbye, Mr. DeckerKirk Does It AgainThe ChallengeThe Ritual

One of the most frequent questions I get about any of my series is the exact location of Vasily Korsokovach’s condominium in Anaheim, California. While it’s a topic I’ve addressed many, many times here on the blog, I always smile when it comes up for it allows me — for at least a few minutes — to wax poetic about one of my favorite topics, that being Walt Disney’s original theme park. It’s not an accident that Vasily is in love with the place; he gets that directly from me. I was of the generation who begged their parents to subscribe to the original version of the Disney channel, and then watched, enthralled, as it showed EPCOT being built; a business trip to Orlando many years later provided me the chance to visit Walt Disney World for the very first time. While I’ve been fortunate enough to visit a fair number of times since, I’ve never forgotten the experience of being exposed to the magic of the parks that first time, creating — and cementing, perhaps — a lifetime love for all things from the House of Mouse.

(And before you ask, no, I am not on their payroll; not for lack of trying, though. The stack of rejection letters I received from Disney is only slightly smaller than those from publishers that passed on my early manuscripts.)

After my wife and I relocated to Arizona, and once I had accrued enough vacation time, we made our first sojourn out to Anaheim; it happened to be just a few months ahead of the second park opening, so (without actually planning it that way), we managed to experience Disneyland nearly as it had existed for its first forty-five years. My best friend moved to California not long afterward, giving us an excellent excuse for regular visits (both to them, and, of course, the park), and that, oddly enough, led to the creation of a tradition we have observed for years when the Fourth of July appears on the calendar.

I don’t quite remember how it started, but I think we happened to be visiting my friend and her family over the long Fourth of July holiday weekend and had tickets for the park. This would have been back in the Fastpass days, a dark time when you couldn’t entirely script your visit and were therefore often forced to wait in a ride queue to kill time before your pass for a different ride could be used. Pre-smart phones, that meant you often wound up in conversation with the people around you as the line slowly — ever so slowly — snaked toward the prize at the end.

It was during one of those long waits — probably on a hot day — when we started talking about favorite holiday movies; I don’t entirely recall who joked about Die Hard being a Christmas movie, but I do remember using the same logic to quip that Independence Day — a massive blockbuster from 1996 — certainly fit the bill for the Fourth. To my surprise, my friend agreed, and then dropped the mic by telling us she had the DVD back at their apartment. That was the first time we gathered as a group to watch Independence Day; nearly every year since, we’ve figured out a way to continue the tradition, first alternating locations and then, at one point, using the “watch with a friend” feature Amazon once offered.

When the sequel appeared in 2016, we gleefully started a double feature; the years when we are in California, we always watch after being in the park, sandwiching the movies between the traditional barbecue and fireworks. On the occasions when they are with us in Arizona, we make a day of it, watching the first movie in the morning and then the sequel after lunch, then wrap the day with whatever fireworks we can find; often, it’s A Capitol Fourth on PBS, though during the pandemic, Disney actually live streamed their fireworks from Magic Kingdom — a true treat. We couldn’t be together in person this year, but that didn’t stop us from an afternoon double feature, synched up as best as we could with a flurry of text messages; the running commentary was half the fun, especially now that my friend’s youngest has her first smart phone. And since it’s never too early, we’re already plotting how we want to do it next year.

For that is how you keep favorite traditions alive.

Reflection in the Shadows drops on Tuesday; as I write this blog post, I’m inside the window when the manuscript is frozen in preparation for preorders to be shipped, which is pretty much when it begins to feel real for me. While I’m not one to tinker with a story this close to a publication date, I also have this incessant need to do one final proofread in order to squash any egregious typos I missed during the prior 999 attempts. This many novels in, I am more or less resigned to the fact that a few will slip through despite my best efforts; considering how much time I’ve spent with this particular manuscript, I hope it’s fewer than normal.

As is now traditional, here are some intriguing tidbits from Reflection. Since this is a new set of characters — and a new universe — these tidbits will be a bit more expansive than normal, though I will also strive not to spoil anything. I’ll expand on many of these for the podcast that will (hopefully) appear soon(ish).

Will there be an audiobook version?

Yes. It will be published about two weeks from when the Kindle version hits the system; there is a quirk to the way Amazon handles these things, so I can’t begin work on the audiobook until then.

Is this set in the same universe/timeline as Sean and Vasily?

That is an excellent question! The short answer is… I’ve not decided (yet). An early draft of the novel did feature a cameo from Vasily, and my character sheet does indicate that Kate knows and has worked with him in the past; for the moment, thought, this is not canon. As far as the timeline goes, the events in Reflection take place roughly contiguously with those in Bygones, which (if you are keeping track) puts it about a year behind the most recent Vasily novel, Masks.

Where is Santa Marcel?

The city where Kate lives and works is fictional, but is located in Orange County, California. In my brain, it’s a bit further East than Rancho Linda, in a more industrial — and far more middle-class — portion of the county.

Is this book a mystery novel? Or a fantasy?

One of the hardest things I had to do was figure out the primary category for this novel. At its core, I believe the book is actually a standard police procedural/classic detective mystery; there is still my signature murder in Act One, and Kate is a full-fledged investigator working the leads to find her suspect. I have introduced a level of fantasy, but while Ocelot has significant magical abilities, they’re not of the type where he can simply wave his hand (or, I suppose, paw) and just outright solve the case for Kate. In fact, his magic complicates the investigation in ways I’d never be able to write about with Sean or Vasily.

It sounds like you have some strange rules about magic…

I do, at least in the context of the universe that Ocelot exists in. I felt it was important to have a framework he could operate against, one that would provide me with boundaries that would keep the tale feeling realistic and believable (despite the fantasy elements). It also prevented me from magic-ing my way out of any problems; I can’t tell you how tempting it was to have Ocelot snap his fingers and just fix my mistakes.

Tell me more about Ocelot.

I kind of spend the whole book defining him, honestly, so I can’t say too much without spoiling things. Suffice it to say he works on behalf of an ancient deity named Tezcatlipoca to maintain balance in the universe. (No pressure, right?)

Does Kate work with Ocelot?

Eventually, yes. They wind up starting at opposite ends of the case at the center of the plot, and discover they can make more progress if they combine their talents. (Am I allowed to add that was a double entendre?)

Wait, what? Which part?

No comment.

I thought the series was about Kate Oliver and Tenoch Vasquez.

It is, indeed. Tenoch is Kate’s former flame from their high school years, and makes a surprising reappearance in Santa Marcel after literally dropping out of site for more than a decade. Their relationship is central to the story and drives multiple elements of the plot.

Okay, that’s enough for now. If you’ve not pre-ordered your edition, there’s still time to lock in the price and/or get the Kindle version on the day it drops.

Preorder Reflection in the Shadows