Linda L. Richards ENDINGS is (fortunately) only the beginning

HALLIE EPHRON: A few months ago I had the great good luck to be asked to consider blurbing Linda L. Richards's thriller, ENDINGS. I said I would try to get to it. Which I did. And then something that rarely happened did--I couldn't put it down. Really. I could not.

The blurb practically wrote itself:

"Brilliant. Terrifying. Compulsively readable."

Linda is the author of 15 books and the founder and publisher of JANUARY MAGAZINE. I'm thrilled to have her as a guest today on Jungle Red, pondering her main character, a woman unlike any I've encountered previously in crime fiction.

Take it away, Linda...

LINDA L. RICHARDS: Recently I’ve been thinking a lot about the nature of good and evil.

That sounds so trite, so predictable. But hear me out. It’s worth considering.

The narrating character in my most recent book, ENDINGS, is a hit woman, a contract killer. She kills people for money. That isn’t the sum of who she is or even anywhere near the totality of the story she stars in, but it’s an easy way for us to begin to understand her.

She is not a bad person. I mean, she should be, right? She kills people; takes their lives. What kind of good person does stuff like that? But, like all of us, she has been forged by the situations that brought her to the point in her life when we meet her.

While writing Endings I researched these things: good and evil. Do they even exist as forces in the world? While I researched, a political vortex composed of both of these things seemed to shift around my feet, like so much sand. For a while over the last couple of years, it would seem as though evil was reflected every day on the evening news. I still emerged from the experience as I went into it: we are -- all of us -- the sum of our parts. We are created not only by DNA, but also by circumstance.

People have asked me how I managed to make the protagonist in Endings relatable. I think it’s because I didn’t try. She exists in the world on her own steam, as it were. Her world. Like all of us, she was forged by her circumstance.

So: relatable. The protagonist in Endings reacts to things in a human way. Early in Endings, she loses her child, and ultimately her husband, in a freak accident. And these things alter her.

In fact with the second book complete and while I’m heading into a third, I find she is still reeling from those events. Not in an obvious way. But they have changed her in ways she doesn’t understand. In ways, honestly, maybe even I don’t fully understand on a conscious level. But readers are getting it.

I was astonished when, on release day, the narrator of the audiobook version of Endings encapsulated perfectly what had been in my heart. But I would have been hard-pressed to find words for some of what I poured into the book. Human things. Things that had nothing to do with taking lives, but everything to do with living them.

So on release day, narrator Jennifer Wren Warren tweeted that, in addition to being a thriller, Endings was “a meditation on loss and redemption and the media, and it made me cry!” Her words made me cry, too, because certainly those things were on my mind as I wrote the book. They were never top of mind -- if they had been, it would not be enjoyable fiction. But criticism of the media’s handling of hard news was one of the things I was chewing on as I wrote. And the twinned themes of loss and redemption figure starkly in the whole work.

And, of course, Endings is a thriller. One is not to lose sight of that. It is intended to make you catch your breath, and there are certainly whole chunks of the book when the reader is meant to be perched on the edge of her seat. So it is meant to be all of that, and also more.

Many years ago I interviewed a very famous crime fictionist for January Magazine who told me about a super fancy German photographer who was taking her picture for a big deal magazine. He instructed her to stand erect and then pull her leg up behind her, by the heel. She told him it hurt. “Of course it hurts,” he said, or something very like that. “That’s the point. It must hurt. There is no art without pain.”

I’m not entirely certain I believe all of those words: that there is no art without pain, but I certainly believe in what they represent. To be satisfied with art -- a book, a movie, a painting, whatever -- there must be more than what can be seen on the surface. There must be layers. Depths. Did I reach those depths and layers with Endings? I hope so. If you read it, maybe you will let me know.

HALLIE: This got me thinking, is pain an essential ingredient for a really good crime novel? For the author? For the character? And what about for the reader?

And while you're thinking about that, make room on your TBR list for ENDINGS.

Getting the last words right

HALLIE EPHRON: There's plenty of knock-down-dead opening lines in crime novels. Here's one of my personal favorites:

"They both wore thin rubber masks."  Dick Francis, Bonecrack 

But great final lines are harder to come by. Of course, there's Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep: 

On the way downtown I stopped at a bar and had a couple of double Scotches. They didn't do me any good. All they did was make me think of Silver-Wig, and I never saw her again.

I know writers are universally ecstatic to GET to writing that final line, because the hardest work (first draft) is over. I like to end with something of a bookend, echoing and resolving some question that got the story going. Something which clears the decks and enables the main character to move on.

Here's the ending from YOU'LL NEVER KNOW, DEAR:

Flooding back came the dream Vanessa had had before she left Providence. She could still see the towering wave, Grandma Sorrel emerging from a wall of water and offering Vanessa a blanket-wrapped bundle. 

It hadn’t been a baby or a doll. It had been both.

How do you think about the final lines of your novel?

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: The closing line is as important as the opening line, in my opinion. I always wind up writing my endings three times: the first in a huge rush to finally finish the $%^&$% book - I have in the past written eight to ten thousand words on the last push. (No, I can't seem to replicate this at other times, alas.) 

Needless to say, that draft is a hot mess. The second time, I revise to my agent's and editor's notes, fixing plot threads, pacing, etc. 

The third time, I whet the words. I like to leave the reader with either a sting or a cliffhanger. #sorrynotsorry

Here's the ending of TO DARKNESS AND TO DEATH:

She chimed in, her alto humming above his baritone, the sleeves of his dinner jacket falling over her hands, and they danced beneath the November moon, to sad, sweet music they made themselves.

RHYS BOWEN: Oh Julia, I'm not sure I am happy with a last line that's a cliff-hanger! I find it frustrating to know that the story was not complete and I'll now have to read the next book to find out what happened next. If I know it's going to be book one of a trilogy that's fine. If I really adored the book, I guess it's fine too because I would read the next one anyway. I did leave some doors open at the end of In Farleigh Field, sort of hinting where my characters might be going next--just in case I chose to write a sequel.

But I think my favorite last line was from my first mystery (and my 40th comes out next month!). It was EVANS ABOVE, and the story was about murders that take place on Mount Snowdon. I made the mountain into a character, an observer with brief interjections like "High above came a cry that nobody heard."

And the last line was: 

high above the mountain rested.

LUCY BURDETTE: I have to agree with Rhys--I don't like cliffhangers in the series I love. I like to know the characters are tucked away somewhere safely, at least until the next book.

This has been an interesting exercise because I realize that though I spend a lot of time on first lines, which are supposed to serve as hooks for potential readers, and also on last lines in first chapters (ditto about the hook,) I don't spend as much time constructing one sentence for the last bit. None of my Key West endings are snappy one liners, but here's the ending of FATAL RESERVATIONS, that I like a lot because it foreshadows, shows character, and wraps things up:

Lieutenant Torrence glared at Bransford and then pull his sunglasses down to cover his eyes. "It's possible–no, it's likely–that I'll kill you if you screw things up," he said to Bransford, tipping his chin at me. And then he rolled his window up and drove away.

JENN McKINLAY: Oh, boy, you had to go here, didn't you, Hallie? By the way, you're all brilliant with last lines. I am wowed by you all. 

I do disagree with Lucy and Rhys about cliff hangers. I love, love, love, hate them. See? Mostly, love with a little hate. If it's a stand alone, that's tough because I need resolution, but if it's a series, I'll take a cliffhanger, even if it's excruciating because it will fuel my desire for that next book like crazy. As for my own personal last lines, I agonize over them because I want closure on the mystery, but curiosity about the protagonists' lives and what's next for them. 

My last library lover's mystery, DEATH IN THE STACKS, ended with this texted conversation:

"Just wait until you hear what happened at the library today."His reply was immediate. "No dead bodies?"Lindsey smiled. "None, I promise. But I have to say the library is never dull. Never."

When I started writing romantic-comedy, I was hoping I could end every book with "And they lived happily ever after," but, of course, that's a no-no, so here is the very  last line of EVERY DOG HAS HIS DAY: 

"Orgasms multiple." 

Which, if you think about it, is a happy ever after, isn't it? LOL.

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: I work so hard on last lines. And here's how I know when they work:  I write my first full draft, and see how I feel as I type the last line. Often I say: oh, okay, that works, hurray, I'm done.  But I know that's not true! As I continue to work on the manuscript, the last line changes, sometimes tremendously, sometimes just  tweaking. But I ONLY know I really finished when it makes me well up with tears. Then, and  only then, am I satisfied.

My rules for endings? The plot of the story must be totally wrapped up, way before the final sentence, so it's got to be something that mirrors or reflects or underscores not only the whole book, but, if I am lucky, the first line of the book--maybe it's the opposite of the first line? Or the realization of the first line? And  it's also got to be something that's..how shall I put it....desired by the main character, thematically. And it's got to be--sweetly unexpected, but absolutely foreshadowed. So it's been set up throughout, you know? And then it  brings the book together emotionally. And is full of promise of forward motion. 

Like in PRIME TIME. Jane meets Jake. On their first "date," they see a shooting star. And have a bantery discussion about what you are supposed to do when you see a shooting star. (make a wish, right? but it's more than that) At the beginning of the last chapter, after the crime is solved and when they are getting ready to go to the Emmys (:-)) Jake gives her a present--and it's a diamond star necklace. Which she puts on. Aww.  And then Jane realizes stuff about the danger she's escaped, and what she's learned, and how she treasures her friends, and her emerging journalism career, and her love for Jake, and what life is all about.  

And the last line is:  

I touch the little diamond star around my neck. And I make a wish.

INGRID THOFT:  Some of my last lines are cliffhangers, and some aren’t, but I think cliffhangers are fantastic in a series.  The whole point of a series is that you engage readers in the long arc of the story, so I think it’s fair game to leave them hanging a bit and pique their interest in the next installment.


In the most recent Fina Ludlow book, DUPLICITY, Fina discovers a shocking family secret in the last chapter, a secret that her father, Carl, has been keeping her whole life:  

Fina grabbed her coat and threw open the front door.“Fina, wait!” her father called after her.She broke into a slow jog, her head pounding with each step, putting as much distance as possible between the.A million miles wouldn’t be enough.

DEBORAH CROMBIE: I work harder at last lines than first lines, and often write the entire last scene when I'm only part way through the book. It gives me an end point, something to work towards. And there have been quite a few times, when I actually get there, that I don't have to change a word.

I've written some cliffhangers that have made readers want to kill ME, but here's one of my favorites, from WHERE MEMORIES LIE, on a much more romantic note: 

He stared at her, the tulips tilting dangerously in his grasp, forgotten. In his eyes she saw a flare of delight, and herself reflected, infinitely, like an image in a hall of mirrors.

"A wedding. If you wanted...That is..."

"I think," he said slowly, setting the flowers on the table, "that something of the sort could be arranged."

  

HALLIE: So let's hear it... What do you like in an ending? Cliffhanger? Echo? Tie things up? Multiple orgasms? What are you druthers??

Hank realizes: It All Depends On How YOU Look At It

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN:   It's "What We’re Writing" week! And I am coming around the writing corner (crossing fingers), to figuring out the end of WHAT YOU SEE.   Since I don’t use an outline, I won't know what happens until it happens. I mean, until I write it. Scary! And exciting.

And I have come to a revelation about endings.

Were you--like me--one of those people in high school who loved taking standardized tests? Oh, I actually looked forward to it. And I did really well on one called the Miller Analogies test.  Remember?  It was to see if you could understand how one thing related to another.  Word One is to Word Two as Word Three is to Word Four.

By analyzing the relationship of word three to word four, you have to figure out which of the multiple choice words was had the same relationship to the first word.

Like:

Puppy is to _____ as Kitten is to Cat.

a.    Wolf

b.   Dog

c.    Mary

d.   Husband

(I will pause, now, while you think about this. But you probably don’t need the multiple choice answers to figure it out. And yeah, you know the answer they want.)

But!  A writer--even if you choose the "correct" answer-- might think of other things. And my theory is—that’s what makes writers (and readers!) different. And special. And able to make stuff up.

For instance. What if Cat is a person? You could then think of a person who had a little dog, and it would be correct to say:  Puppy is to Mary as Kitten is to Cat.

 What if Puppy is a nickname? And that’s what you call your husband? And you also call your grownup cat “Kitten?” So, Husband could also be right.

And what if they meant—a big wild cat, like a lion? A wolf is kind of a big wild dog. So if you look at it that way, Wolf is right.

You could think about syllables, and number of letters, and well, what else?

An ARC of TBT to one lucky commenter!

And that’s what gave me goose bumps when I figured out the ending of TRUTH BE TOLD. I sat at my computer, staring at the screen, thinking: What would someone really do here? What would happen next?

And most important: Why.

And that is when an author has to start thinking about relationships. What one person means to the other, what one person thinks about the other—and how you could make those puzzle pieces of motivation go together in ingenious and surprising ways.

How does one thing relate to the other in an unexpected way? Not the first answer on the Miller Analogies test, but the most interesting one?

(Sidebar: Oh. I just remembered this.  Donald Maass told me once that given the analogies test, children matched Monkey with “Banana,” while adults matched monkey with “chimpanzee.” Adults chose what the subject was. Kids chose what the subject wanted. That, he said, proves kids are storytellers!)

Anyway. When I figured out the end of TRUTH BE TOLD (I will not tell you here, of course), I will confess I was by myself in my study, and I stood up, and applauded.

And I am hoping that happens with WHAT YOU SEE. And you know, um, soon.

Here’s a truly funny thing. When I was looking up examples of the Miller Analogies, here’s (hilariously) one of the first ones Google provided.

2. DIVIDEND : STOCKHOLDER :: (____) : AUTHOR

A. patent 


B. royalty


C. wage


D. interest

 Of course, now we know, the answer is (say it with me) ALL OF THE ABOVE. Because it all depends on our imagination.

And finally, good news about endings:

TRUTH BE TOLD just got a starred review from Library Journal—and part of the rave says:  “Packs a powerful punch...drop everything and binge-read until the mind-boggling conclusion.”

Hurray.

Reds, were you good at tests? Did you like them? And what’s your answer to the puppy question? An arc of TRUTH BE TOLD to one lucky test-taker! 

*******Oh, and PS! YOU ARE INVITED to the TRUTH BE TOLD launch party! October 7 at Brookline (MA) Booksmith. I will mail you an invitation if you ask in the comments!)