One of the casualties from my editing frenzy of The Perpetual Now in 2019 was a scene that involved an exchange between my protagonist, Justin Lambert, and his elderly neighbour Mr. Lovato. In it, Lovato recounts an anecdote about the town of Ferguston and its history of “small-town justice.” While he doesn’t come straight out and promise that the perpetrator of Elise Lambert’s disappearance will be brought to justice, he does suggest that such things have a strange way of balancing themselves out, at least in Ferguston.
I loved the scene for the colour and depth that it provided—besides the fact that it’s a great bit of storytelling, in a Stephen King-ish kind of way— but at 2 000 words it was far too long to keep considering it didn’t exactly move the plot forward, and cuts had to be made. So, while it didn’t make it to the final manuscript, the scene was preserved in a scraps folder, where all kinds of cherished but unusable bits reside, waiting for some future application.
That happened sooner than I expected. Funny thing about writing: things are revealed to you as you write, be they aspects of a character’s personality, their motivations, their back story, an entire sequence of events, the sudden appearance of someone new, you name it. It almost feels as if the writer is indeed a spectator to the actions in the story, and not the creator. It’s weird. The first time I ever experienced this was during the writing of The Perpetual Now, when Justin witnesses a horrific automobile accident only a few meters away. It became a pivotal part of the story, but I originally had no real plan for it: it just kind of “happened.”
The same thing occurred—more than once, as I think about it—with Day of Epiphany. One of my main characters began to evolve—or should I say “began to reveal themselves”—in a way that made me think of that beloved thrown-away scene from The Perpetual Now, which suggested a very interesting and appropriate fate for the character in question. And, best of all, there would be no need to adjust any part of the scene. The fact that it takes place in 2006, while the brunt of the action in Day of Epiphany takes place between 1950 and 1959, offers a very different—and refreshingly modern—perspective, and gave me the opportunity to connect the two novels in a very unexpected way.
Will the Epilogue cause confusion for people who haven’t read my first novel? Maybe, possibly, initially. It takes place 47 years after the closing events of the novel, and involves two characters whom—with the exception of a single fleeting mention of one of them—the reader hasn’t yet encountered. HOWEVER, I do have faith in the intelligence of my readers, and as they read through it and the narrative connection is revealed, they’ll see the relevance. Also, given the depth of the storyline suggested in these few final pages, hopefully the reader will be intrigued and want to learn more and read The Perpetual Now (I’ve only written the one other book so it shouldn’t be hard to figure out where it came from). And it will be a bit of a treat for those who have read the first novel who will recognize the context immediately.
I’m SO looking forward to your feedback on this and so many other things when the new book is published. Things are really moving, so it shouldn’t be too long!
More to come!
So I wrote this novel... 