Decisions

From Sherry where we seem to be swinging between early fall and late fall weather wise and I’m okay with that!



As a writer we have to make a lot of decisions—from the big ones like who’s the killer to the little ones like what is my protagonist going to wear or have for breakfast. I had an interesting conversation with a reader recently via email. She’d just finished reading the Sarah Winston Garage Sale mysteries and she had questions! It was a fun conversation and I always love to hear readers thoughts.






This reader was impressed with the information about being a military spouse. She had a good friend who was a military spouse and thought Sarah’s experiences in the book were very similar to what her friend had lived. I think many of you know that my husband was in the military for almost 22 years. Most of the stories in my books are things I experienced (sans the murders), things friends experienced, or came from questioning spouses I knew.






The pink ruby ring! Spoiler alerts . If you haven’t read beyond book eight, Sell Low, Sweet Harriet and intend to, you might not want to read this paragraph. My reader asked about the pink ruby ring Sarah admires near the end of book eight Sell, Low Sweet Harriet . Wow! Did it cause a lot more stir than I intended it to! I hadn’t even thought of it as an engagement ring until lots of people wrote me after they’d finished reading book eight and said that’s what they hoped it was. The series is set over two years. In Tagged for Death Sarah is freshly divorced after a twenty-year marriage. I didn’t feel like she’d been on her own long enough to be engaged and thought she needed to stand on her own two feet for a bit longer. Sarah needed to know and trust herself first.






My reader loved Mike “the Big Cheese” Titone and wondered about how I came up with his character. I stuck him in there as kind of a joke to good friends of ours — Mike and Mary Titone. People at work started calling him “the Big Cheese” once they found out about the books. Mike evolved in the series. He doesn’t even speak until the third book, but then bam, he became quite the character and I love how he helped Sarah when she was in trouble.







She also asked me why I never mentioned who replaced CJ as police chief. The only reason I never mentioned CJ’s replacement was because he or she was never important to the story.



The love triangle. Oof! When I started writing Tagged for Death , I never meant there to be a love triangle with CJ, Seth, and Sarah. I heard from many readers who believed Sarah should be with one or the other and, whew, deciding which way to go meant disappointing readers. When I finished writing All Murders Final , I didn’t have a contract for more books. If I’d known there would be more, I probably would have ended it differently.



What I did want to do was look at complicated relationships. In Tagged For Death , Sarah is put in a position that she has to help her ex-husband clear his name when he’s accused of murder. She thinks he’s a schmuck, but she knows him well enough to know he wouldn’t kill someone. After Sarah had a one-night stand, I wondered how to further complicate her life. That happened by having the one-night stand be the DA who would be prosecuting her ex. It all just took off from there and a triangle was born. And then I found out how many readers HATE love triangles.













And lastly, there’s the cliffhanger at the end of book four, A Good Day to Buy . The mystery is wrapped up, but something else is unresolved. I wrote a post about them in 2017. You can read about it here . Another thing I found out–lots of readers hate cliffhangers!



Readers: Have you ever written an author with a question? Do you hate or love cliffhangers and love triangles?