The Book That Didn't Want to End

Because I write character-driven novels and don't do a lot of pre-plotting on paper, I can't always tell when my books will end. Recent ones are generally running between eighteen and twenty-one chapters. However, the last manuscript I finished became more uncertain than most.  Set in the West, I had no idea where or when Grandmother's Match for Garrett in the Grandmother Knows Best series would end.

As I continued to write, I kept expecting to draw near to finishing, but the conclusion never came. I don't remember this ever happening before. Normally, my books come to a natural end, and that's what I wanted for this one. However, every time I thought it was getting to a good place to conclude it, I saw another loose end that needed tying up. But I finally did get to a place where I could end things without dropping any threads. And no, it didn't turn out to be unusually long.

Another very unusual thing is that I didn't know how the book would conclude until the last moment. Typically, I know how the story will end by the time I start writing, and then I write the story to get there. In this novel, Wren had a choice to make, and I didn't know which way she would choose. Because of the genre of the book, I almost wish she'd made the other choice, but her decision made the best sense, so I went with it. I hope you'll want to read how all this plays out. It will be on preorder soon and out on January 16.

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