This is a blog post guaranteed to confuse you. I’m already confused, and I’m the writer. (Also, this post has spoilers if you haven’t read the Endurance mysteries but plan to.)
When I began writing my Endurance mystery series about Grace
Kimball, a retired English teacher, it began with Three May Keep a Secret,
and the setting was the small town of Endurance from July through October of
2011. So far, so good. Unlike other writers who knew about series arcs, I
simply wrote one book and hoped it would sell. It did. Now what?
I decided if I were going to write a series, I would
challenge my mind with something different in each book. The second story was a
novella called The Locket, so I had to figure out how to write a novella.
Marry in Haste, the third story and second novel, had a double plot, a
bit over one hundred years apart, and now I had to scratch my head with how to
intertwine the plots and imagine an Endurance in 1893 and 2012. This led to
book four, Death Takes No Bribes, where I took Grace back to the high
school where she taught and from which she retired. In book five, The
Witch’s Child, I moved into the paranormal. Totally different. That story
ended with Jeff Maitlin, whom Grace met in book one, asking her to marry him.
The most recent book, Fabric of Lies, had Jeff and Grace married, a
decidedly different vibe when it came to the relationships among the
characters. Whew! But it also had two flashback chapters where readers met her
deceased first husband, Roger. Oh, he was alive back then. By the end of this
novel, it was only the summer of 2014. Six stories took place in four years. I
think people in Endurance should have moved elsewhere with all those murders.
Now what? Time to really confuse my mind with a new adventure that would have to fit around the framework of the years I’ve created with the series. I’m writing two more novellas to fit with The Locket, and I’ll publish them myself in one book this fall. It will be called From the Casebook of TJ Sweeney and will have three of her cases, ending with The Locket. Stupidly, I didn’t write these in chronological order, so that’s where the confusion begins.
The third novella, “The Locket,” is already written and
published only as an ebook. The second novella will take place during TJ
Sweeney’s twentieth high school reunion. TJ graduated from high school in 1989,
college in 1993, became a police officer shortly after that, and a detective in
2000. (This means she is in college when Fiona Mackenzie is born, leading to
the story of The Witch’s Child.)
This second novella is called “Two Graves.” High school
reunions are often bittersweet, but TJ’s sets in motion a dangerous plot. Gosh,
not everyone liked their high school experience, did they? This novella will
take place before any of the Endurance novels. That’s easy to keep straight.
I was halfway through the second novella about the class reunion when I realized The Depot, a restaurant run by Grace’s former students, Abbey and Camilla, had not opened yet. So, I had to remove that and change my restaurant to a pizza place called the Saucy Slice. And how old was Grace in 2009? She hadn’t retired yet, nor had she met Jeff Maitlin. Were her children still at home? No, the third child left in 1998. Had “The Locket” happened yet? No, it was two years later. See how complicated it can become when you go back in a series instead of straight forward?
Time out for a time check. “The Locket” takes place in
November 2011. That means it fits right between Three May Keep a Secret
in July 2011 and Marry in Haste in January 2012.
I have no title yet for the third novella, which will be the
first story in the book. It’s a prequel because it takes place in TJ’s third
semester of college, which would be fall to winter, 1991. (About this time
Conrad Folger and Emily Peterson got married, setting up the disaster that will
result in Marry in Haste.) In 1991, Grace is still teaching but all
three of her children are in junior high and high school. This means I’ll have
to imagine them since they’ve only been mentioned in the novels. TJ has left
Endurance for the state university and is known as Theresa Sweeney. She’s an
English Literature major, hoping to follow in Grace’s footsteps and become a
college professor of English.
What?
Then how did she become TJ Sweeney, renowned Endurance
police detective? This novella will answer that question.
If I’m
correct on all these dates, here’s the order: “Unnamed college story” is in
Fall 1991;“Two Graves” the second novella, is in Summer 2009; Three May Keep
a Secret takes place in July 2011; “The Locket” is in November 2011; Marry
in Haste is in January 2012; Death Takes No Bribes is in early March
2012; The Witch’s Child is in May 2012; and Fabric of Lies is in
Summer 2014.
Right
now I have five different documents containing timelines. I think it may be
time to put them all together. Do you ever notice errors writers make in their
books because they’re off on a date or time?
Susan Van Kirk is the author of six Endurance Mysteries beginning with Three May Keep a Secret. Her standalone
mystery, A Death at Tippitt Pond, was followed by the Art Center
Mysteries beginning with Death in a Pale Hue. The third book of the
trilogy was nominated for the Anthony Award for Best Paranormal Mystery of
2025. She is a member of Mystery Writers of America, Sisters in Crime, and is
past president of the Guppy Chapter of SinC. Her website: susanvankirk.com
