Pathways

One of my favorite poems is the classic The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost. I’ve read it so many times over the years, the words have come to feel like good friends who visit often, friends of the sort you share a hot cup of coffee with while curled up on a couch, chatting endlessly about everything and nothing. As I’ve grown older, I’ve found the poem increasingly poignant, especially when I consider, on balance, how the various forks in my own life have gone. The final lines have always resonated with me:

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

The Road Not Taken, by Robert Frost. Full text: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44272/the-road-not-taken

There’s a lot going on in that poem, of course, but I’ll leave the critical analysis of the deeper meaning to those far better qualified to take on such tasks. For me, the singular observation that going your own way is often more rewarding than following the beaten path feels like validation for many of my own life choices — and the sort of guidance I’ve used when it comes to shaping the lives of my characters. Part of being a good detective (in my view) is that innate desire to poke around in corners of people’s lives that most would ignore; they also have a willingness to look under rocks or wander into the wilderness without so much as a map in search of the truth, something the wider populace would be unlikely to do.

They could play it safe and color inside the lines, of course. I haven’t always myself and, honestly, there can be consequences when you step out of bounds. Younger me didn’t always understand that; older me has adroitly taken those lessons and used them to craft stories that feel relatable and, hopefully, believable.

Sean and Vasily have had their own share of fork-ish decisions; Sean is the most recent, of course. When Sean appears in Orlando driving a midlife crisis-Mustang in Silenced, it’s fairly clear he’s not dispassionately considering his options. That becomes a more detailed thread in the book I just completed writing, Aftermath; Sean has to literally figure out which one of those roads he should take. Does he keep going as an investigator? Does he quit? Or is there a middle path he’d not yet considered? I brought all of that into the novel and wove it into the overarching mystery — for Sean’s life choices are very much tied to his identity as a detective. Like so many of us, he’s not sure where the line is between what he does and who he really is. One can’t be considered in isolation from the other.

Aftermath is a fun read, and I think resolves rather nicely. Sean gets to grow even more, adding more nuance to an already interesting personality. I’m already thinking ahead to his next adventure; work will begin on that in earnest come November. I’m going to take the rest of the summer to wrap up Midnight at Dawn, which I’ve left languishing on my in-progress folder for far too long. Dipping back into the magical realm for a bit will be a nice respite from the reality-based fiction I usually do; I’m looking forward to shifting gears for a bit, though it’s been long enough that I need to go back and re-read the 40k words I have so far just to put me back into the Santa Marcel mindset.

Apropos of something, I am also working on a short mystery set in the Windeport universe. Once complete, it will be a freebie for newsletter subscribers; the hope is to have it ready in early September. Be on the lookout!