WHOSE STORY IS THIS ANYWAY?

By Vicki Delany

I'm delighted to invite my good friend, fellow festival organizer, and excellent writer Janet Kellough back to Type M. I'm certainly keen to find out what Thaddeus Lewis is getting up to now.

One of the things that is lovely about writing a series is the way the characters evolve as time goes on. In the first book in my Thaddeus Lewis mystery series, On the Head of a Pin, the hero/detective  Lewis is a man in his prime struggling with the unexpected death of his daughter, a loss that propels him headlong into a murder investigation. He is decisive and forthright and resolute, certain in his calling as a saddlebag preacher. But in his pursuit of the killer, he comes to understand that the world is perhaps not quite as black and white as he’d always believed.

As his story progressed through the subsequent books, he loosened up even more. He softened. He began to doubt himself. And the meaner I was to him, the more relatable he became. And I’ve been pretty nasty - I’ve bashed him over the head and broken his arm. I gave him a gimpy knee. I pointed a gun at him a few times. I killed his wife. I humiliated him. I seduced him. (Big existential crisis for a 19^th century minister.)

But with each challenge, his character deepened and I liked him more.

His family grew up around him as the story went on. Relationships subtly shifted. And then friend and foe alike began to wander through the narrative, popping up here and there just when the plot needed them most.

Now, in the seventh book The Untoward Assassin Thaddeus’s granddaughter Martha, who was a toddler in the first book, is nearly an adult and about to embark on a career as a teacher, thanks to the fact that the Provincial Normal School, the teachers’ college of the day, actually accepted female students – a provision virtually unheard of at institutions of higher learning in 1855.

Thaddeus accompanies her to Toronto, and lo and behold, there’s his youngest son Luke, sitting there ready to be called back into the story. But the dynamic between Luke and his father has changed from the earlier books. Luke has gone from being an insecure student with a big secret to a successful physician (he still has a big secret, but he’s not as bothered by it.) He is very worried about his father’s health. Both he and his brothers are worried about what Thaddeus is going to do with himself now that he’s given up preaching. The question “What are we going to do about Thaddeus?” becomes a recurrent refrain as the plot unfolds. Each of the Lewis sons is willing to look after their father if necessary, but each of them will be relieved if one of the others offers first. Thaddeus is no longer the patriarch to whom everyone turns. The old man has become a problem.

But in the way of many children, they’ve underestimated him. He’s still a magnet for trouble and he’s still quite capable of meeting it head on.

When he becomes convinced that someone is trying to kill him. Luke dismisses the notion at first. (Oh no! Is Thaddeus becoming senile?) Martha believes him – but where once she would have believed simply because he’s Thaddeus and for most of her childhood she was a little confused about whether or not he and God were actually the same person - she now weighs the evidence and comes to her own conclusion. Eventually everyone agrees that something is going on and that the would-be assassin must be connected somehow to one of the crimes that Thaddeus previously investigated.

And guess what? There were any number of ready-made suspects lurking in the background just waiting for a reprise. I had my choice of instant villains, already conveniently supplied with motive, their characters established and ready to go.

Any writer of fiction creates a setting through which the characters move, but a series allows the context to shift and grow in surprising ways. Past events impact the storyline in odd ways. Characters can make an appearance in one book and suddenly pop up again several books later. Sometimes they grumble until you let them out. Sometimes they show up and run away with the plot. And sometimes both the setting and the characters change and grow in directions that you couldn’t have conceived of in the beginning.

“But what happens next?” Thaddeus Lewis fans ask. The answer is, “I don’t know. I’m waiting or the characters to tell me.”

Sometimes I’m not sure it’s even me writing this stuff anymore.

Janet Kellough is the author of The Thaddeus Lewis mysteries, the adventures of a 19^th century saddlebag preacher. She has also written two contemporary novels The Palace of the Moon and The Pear Shaped Woman, the speculative fiction work The Bathwater Conspiracy, and the semi-non-fictional Legendary Guide to Prince Edward County. She is also a co-founder of Women Killing It Crime Writers’ Festival, which showcases crime fiction by female authors.