Of course, that could be because I totally changed my process when writing this book. In almost every book I write, I write in a straight line. From beginning to end, start to finish. I usually don’t deviate from that. For The Finish, though, I wrote the first chapter, then I wrote the last chapter, because I knew how I wanted it to end. Everything in between was the tough part.
Speaking of the ending, I think I wrote a pretty satisfying conclusion for the series. At least I hope you all feel the same. I did go back and forth about Jacobs being the one to kill Mallette. I did give some serious thought to it actually being Thrower as being the one to end things. In my initial vision of that fatal scene between them, I actually had Mallette and Jacobs facing off, with Jacobs down, or injured, with Mallette in front of him, ready to finish him off. Then Thrower would come up behind Mallette and take him out, saving the day.
My thinking in that strategy was that Jacobs had risen to be the better man. He didn’t need to be the one to end things, even with all of the horrible things that Mallette had done to him. But when I wrote that scene, I just naturally gravitated to the way things eventually played out. Maybe in my mind I thought that Jacobs really deserved to be the one to end it, even though he really didn’t take much pleasure out of Mallette being dead.
Now that I’m talking about the series, it’s interesting how things play out, and how different they wind up being than when you first envision them. I am not a writer who plots and outlines. I’ve tried it, but it didn’t really work for me. But I still usually have a sense of where I want to go. Now, sometimes the characters and the story don't agree and they go off in their own direction anyway.
It’s especially true in terms of characters. I never really plan how big or small a character is or might become. I try to let it play out naturally. The only one that is obviously planned is the main character, in this case Brett Jacobs. I don’t really have any preconceived notions about how big a role they will play.
This is evident in the case of Gunner, who when I initially thought of the series, was not even in my thought process. He just naturally showed up, and I couldn’t get rid of him after that. It just seemed to flow so smoothly that he’d become Jacobs’ right hand. Now in retrospect, I couldn’t imagine the series without him, and I’m not sure Jacobs would have even made it through the series without him. I think he’s so integral to the series, and to Jacobs, that he just naturally became such an important character. I’m not even sure why I included him in that one scene where he first appeared. But it wasn’t with the intention of him becoming the major player he turned out to be. However, I’m certainly glad I did!
Another character like this is Eddie Franks. When I first wrote the character, I had no idea how important he would become. I first thought he’d be there for a couple scenes, and that would be it. But I just couldn’t get rid of the guy. You never knew what would come out of his mouth, and some of it didn’t make any sense, but he and Jacobs wound up striking up this friendship that Jacobs desperately needed. And, with a lot of the series being pretty dark, at least in view of everything that happened to Jacobs, I really thought that Franks brought some needed levity to just about everything.
Speaking of Franks, I did have thoughts about killing the character off, I think it was somewhere in books nine or ten. And I really thought hard about it. It almost happened. But in the end, I just decided not to go through with it. No specific reason for it. I just decided against it.
Tiffany was also a weird case, in that I never intended for her to stick around for the rest of the series when I first wrote her. Initially, I thought her and Jacobs would go on a few dates, but then they’d go their separate ways, whether it was Jacobs getting pulled back into a darker place, or her not wanting to get into that type of life, but she just kept hanging around and coming back.
I did reference several times in the series, mostly before Tiffany came along, that Jacobs was growing weary, and was probably willing, if not expecting to not make it out of this fight alive. He couldn’t pull himself out of the hole he was in without his family. But when Tiffany came along, I thought it was good for him, and he would finally have something to look forward to, assuming he could finish off Mallette.
Nate Thrower. The bodyguard. This is another guy who somehow crept his way into the series. When I first thought of this character, he was originally supposed to be a nameless, faceless guy. We’d never really see him, or talk to him, or really even know he was there in any way. Jacobs would give this guy a nod outside the restaurant, and that’s pretty much the only thing we’d ever see from him, except to know that he was there watching. But I just felt it’d be pretty interesting to start seeing things from his perspective, and he became such a huge part of the last few books, that I really couldn’t see
