One of the most interesting creative challenges I face when writing is remaining true to the spirit of my characters. It’s not just ensuring they sound consistent to the reader from book to book; I mean, that’s important, obviously, especially since I bounce back and forth between Sean Colbeth and Vasily Korsokovach. Those two have many similarities, to be sure, but they are unique personalities who see the world quite differently. Hearing Sean say something Vas might utter would kind of spoil the magic — or at the very least, make the reader think the author was just phoning it in.

But beyond that, it’s also means striving to ensure I adhere to this rather long (and mostly unwritten) list of rules for how my characters interact with the world around them. I’ve touched on that before in a different context, namely the rules of magic that Ocelot has to follow; while that was partly for my benefit to ensure I had him cast the same spell the same way for nearly the same reason throughout Reflection in the Shadows, it also helped to ground the story in a believable way. As readers, by the time we reach the finale we kind of know what’s in his arsenal at that point so his resolution makes sense (and wasn’t plucked entirely out of thin air). I suppose that’s also a side effect the mystery writer side of the house, i.e. my desire to make sure I’ve sprinkled enough context throughout the story that the reader might make the same connections my detective is making (or, in Ocelot’s case, select the same spells).

For Sean and Vasily, that also extends to ensuring they are incredibly consistent in how they apply their morality and ethics. I’ve written both of them long enough now that I can easily tell when I’ve begun to go off the rails on something and will pull it back in line with where they need to be. While such a diversion could conceivably be interesting, plot-wise, I always weigh that against whether it moves the character forward in some concrete way, growing them into the next iteration of who I want them to be — or if it was just a fun passage to write that lends nothing more to the story than a few pages of shock. When it’s the latter, I know I tread dangerously close to damaging my character’s relationship with the reader, damage that cannot often be repaired easily.

This is top of mind for me at the moment as I’m finishing up that bonus section of Aftermath I mentioned last week. It’s a minor spoiler to reveal that writing that addition has required me to justify what exactly happened between Sean and Suzanne; it’s also forced me to look at the final chapters of the prior book — Belie — and reassess them from Suzanne’s point of view. What was she actually feeling in those last moments? How certain was she of the path she’d chosen — and how did that certainty change in the hours and days and weeks that passed afterwards? I had a sense of all of that when I closed out Belie, but now that I’m right back into the thick of it with Aftermath, I’m finding her view on events is not quite what Sean reported back to us as readers.

Does that mean I might be breaking my own rules, then?

I’m honestly not sure. Part of me says no, for we were seeing everything through Sean’s eyes — seeing it as his truth. I don’t go in for the unreliable narrator format, so I believe Sean told us what he thought he experienced. Was it tinged by his own emotions? Unquestionably, almost as much as what I’m now seeing from Suzanne’s end of things. Am I surprised that two things can be true at the same time? Not in the least, especially when humans are involved. My challenge now is to make sure it continues to ring true, and that whatever resolution I am working toward passes the plausibility test — for both myself, as the author, and for you, as the reader. We both have some level of investment in this, so I know I need to get it right.

No pressure…