Lillian Hellman (left) said this.‘If you hope to be any good, nothing you write will ever come out as you first hoped.’ It is true and if you are truly lucky it will happen to you.
As some of my readers know (and I hope have enjoyed) my novel has been serialized here on my site.
I have waited until Joe dies at Charlie’s hands to share with you the back story of how the last chapters of my book came to be. How I experienced this lucky event of my book not turning
out as I had first hoped.
In the play script version , this is where the story ends; Joe dying on the cold floor of a prison and
Charlie’s line: “I got you to find Chelsea, didn’t I?” And this was where I had planned for the novel to end too.
IF I had not been working closely with a woman who had ‘stood by her man’ for 15 years while he was in prison. Shortly after he was paroled, 
her son received 13 years for manslaughter. She has been there, done that times two! After SK (the woman outside real walls) read the last pages, she looked up and asked: “What happened to Charlie? To Alma?“
I looked blank for a moment and then replied, “do you think anyone would care?” She said, “Absolutely.” “Is Charlie in a death penalty state? Does Alma stick by him?” she asked. And “By the way, what happened to
Hattie and her kids?”
The problem was I had no experience with death row……BUT I did have SK, whose son narrowly avoided the
death penalty when he pled down from murder two to voluntary manslaughter. SK never spoke of those
dark days when she thought she would lose her son when the state executed him. Now she was willing to
speak of it with me.
Based upon her stories and the stories of her friends (other women outside the walls) I was able to write those
final chapters. Did Charlie walk down that long hallway to the ‘needle’? Was anyone there to witness his death?
You might be surprised. And yes, what did happen to Hattie?
Try to explore everything you can about your characters’ lives. Don’t leave a single road untraveled. We all care about what happens to the villain!
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The next segment of the novel will appear tomorrow. Hope you’ll return to find out what happens next.
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Start your month off right!! DON’T MISS UPCOMING BLOGS. INTERVIEWS with other best-selling AUTHORS! A NEW SERIES, “The Writer’s Corner”
I have had a wonderful response from other authors and plan on featuring an interview once a month . I have invited such luminaries as: Ann Purser, Susan Elia MacNeal, Maya Angelou, Mark Childress, Rhys Bowen, Dean Koontz, Sheryl Woods, Jo-Ann Mapson, Jeffrey Deaver, Elizabeth Gilbert, Amber Winckler, Robert McCammon, Walter Mosley, Nora Roberts, and many others.
So come along with me; we shall sneak into these writers’ special places, be a fly on the wall and watch them create! Mark Childress is our April author. Robert McCammon is scheduled for May. Caroline Leavitt is June‘s author. July features Rhys Bowen. Sue Grafton is August’s author and September will feature Tasha Alexander.
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