If by chance, you’re a first time visitor to the blog, Welcome, and do pop back and read Parts I and II for context.

The simple fact is like most not-quite-eighteen year olds, I did not recognize how much my ten months in France would change me, nor did it happen all at once. I mentioned previously I had to take an American History course by correspondence for my final credit to graduate from high school. In those days before computers and internet, “snail mail” was it. What none of us knew was the predilection for strikes in France (well, a number of European countries). That included the postal service and due to frequent delays in overseas mail, I was actually only able to complete half a credit instead of the full one. There was discussion about how we were going to handle this.

Now, “follow the bouncing ball” as they say. The town where I lived was predominantly agricultural around, but was a “college town” with Northwestern State of Louisiana. It was hardly a major university, but  because the primary public schools in town actually sat on campus grounds, there was a strong student teaching program. Additionally, for high school students, in junior and senior years, one could take selected freshman courses and receive credit without an actual grade. There was also the standard option to “test out” of certain classes. Once again, I don’t know how many conversations took place, but in the end, the decision for me to enter my freshman year without having graduated from high school was an interesting arrangement. I had, after all, been in attendance at an accredited university. I was given full credit for those courses and I tested out of two other freshman classes – one of which was American History. I therefore began college with almost enough hours to be a sophomore. At some point very late in that year, I received a certificate of completion (I think it was called) for high school. I suppose in the strictest definition, I skipped my senior year of high school, but I’ve never been entirely sure of the correct administrative category. In any case, I graduated from college not long before my 21st birthday.

I suppose each time I release a new book, I continue to have lingering thoughts about any new characters I created and it’s no different with Shades of Deception

I did break away from the “Shades” series to do other writing as I mentioned in the last post. Not that I wanted a break from Bev Henderson per se; it was merely because I became involved in a couple of unexpected projects. Anyway, this was one of those situations in which three different characters who were intended to be somewhat incidental “grew” in importance. In one case, the expansion of the role was a logical step to take based on Chapter One rather than introducing a new character in some later chapters.

The other two came about in an interesting way. When I was working through the proper procedures to follow when there is a fatality in diving (very low odds, but it does happen), one of the guys I was talking with asked a question about what character he was “enacting” for me. At the time, I told him he could be either the good guy or the jerk (using another term I won’t put into the blog). He opted for the good guy and that set me to thinking later about how I could modify the character to bring about a plot twist I hadn’t fully mapped out in the beginning. Since I chose to use the same method in Deception as I did in Shades of Truth of the reader knowing the killer early on, the intricacy had to come in how the truth was ultimately revealed. Changing the once “minor character” worked out quite well.

The final character “expansion” came about because I literally had a “gap” in tying up some loose ends and that’s related to an author’s choice of Point of View – POV. One of the early decisions an author has to make is what POV to use and I’m a bit old-fashioned in that way. I write mostly in third-person, although I actually enjoy first person more in some ways. (A subject for a future post.) In general, I tend to use “dual voice”  of the protagonist and an antagonist. That, however, doesn’t always sync well toward the end of the novel. I was running into that working through the final chapters for Deception and enhancing the one character’s role solved the problem.

Unfortunately my sister and brother-in-law had some flooding of their house in Houston last year and my nephew and his family had far worse. Happily, they’ve all recovered and as my sister and brother-in-law were re-shelving books, she logically keeps mine all together. Her husband apparently stopped and said something like, “I never realized she’s written so many.” Sis’s response was, “Yes, and in such a range.”

I’ve posted before about the difference in writing fiction and non-fiction and even within that, there’s a distinct difference in my fiction. (Okay, as I mentioned when I completed To Play on Grass Fields, that one is the exception to anything else I’ve written or am likely to write.) Anyway, I did not actually plan to do a series when I first wrote Shades of Murder. My original intent was to write different, stand-alone books. Entering more into the scuba community was what led me to make the decision to go with a series and when I created the character of Chris Green in Shades of Truth, I had not planned to spin a series off featuring her. I didn’t develop that concept until several months later and did set up Shades of Gold to account for the next step.

As I have also discussed in previous posts, the Small Town quilting series came about because I had wanted to write in the “cozy” sub-genre of fiction and until then, hadn’t come across a suitable theme – one of the basics in cozies. Notwithstanding the joy I derive from all of those novels, Irises to Ashes, is still in some ways my favorite and is a “stand-alone”. There are definitely a few autobiographical elements, but the story itself was fiction.

On the non-fiction side, those have been a combination of topics I was either simply interested in or felt my own experiences could possibly be of use to other people. The co-authoring situations fall into a slightly different category and I have no desire to ghost-write. I’m not saying “never” on that, but it would have to be a very compelling reason.