By John Gilstrap

Yesterday, February 21, 2023, marked the launch date for White Smoke, the third book in my Victoria Emerson trilogy about the courage and inspiration of an unwilling leader who helps to rebuild society on the heels of a brief by devastating nuclear war. Quoting Chris Miller’s review from BestThrillerBooks.com:

Gilstrap champions Victoria Emerson through grace and grit. She defies post-apocalyptic America expectations by delivering hope and unity in uncertain times. On the outside she’s the epitome of what every person should look up to and garner their strength from, while on the inside things are probably not the same. She is the model citizen as she forces everyone to come to a realization that the old world is gone and it is up to them to make the best of the future. She is rock solid while leading from the front and you can tell the character development has been a pained one for her, but something that the people of Ortho have come to depend on.

 

Victoria Emerson is a leader for a reason, and she doesn’t sugarcoat the truth. The equity that she puts into Ortho and its people is just the same that she puts into her kids and their responsibilities. This is nothing short of what kind of people we hope come to lead our country in rough times, while the real world still has a say in things. White Smoke has action, emotion, and every bit of unease you could ask for.

Pretty cool, eh?

As part of the marketing push for the release, Kensington Books asked me to write an essay to be inserted in various newsletters for distribution to booksellers. When I finished that project, I realized that I had something to share here on the Killzone Blog. It’s not exactly about writing, but I think it provides insight into how hopes, fears and concerns can morph into a story. Here we go:

Preparing For the Unthinkable

I’ve never admitted this in public before: Given the depth and breadth of political
divisions in the United States, I believe that the probability of massive civil unrest is higher today than it has been since 1861. I’m less concerned about international conflict of the nature represented in the Victoria Emerson trilogy, but there’s an unsettling amount of crazy going around.

I hope I’m wrong about all of the above, but beginning in 2017, my wife and I started
planning for the unthinkable. Without going into detail, we live in the country now, largely away from other people, in a place where abundant furry protein sources wander through my property every day. My freezer and pantry are well stocked, but if things go bad, we have a hedge against starvation. Our water comes from a well so we’re no longer dependent upon a municipal bureaucracy to survive. My next step is to become a competent gardener—which, if last summer is any indication, remains a distant if not impossible dream.

All these changes have bought me is time. By being prepared, I can wait out the worst of civil unrest.

Is Survival Important To You?

That’s not a trick question. I grew up in the crucible of the Cold War as a Navy brat. If
the balloon went up, Dad would be off to war and my mother proclaimed her intent to stand outside to be vaporized as early as possible. She wanted nothing to do with the deprivations of a postapocalyptic world.

I don’t share that mindset, though I do understand it. The life we live now, as hard as it
might be, is easy-peasy compared to life after a catastrophe. The constructs of good, dependable, honest governance are the only elements that keep our feral nature at bay. It wasn’t that long ago that people were shooting each other over toilet paper and hand sanitizer. Imagine how ugly things would get if the stakes involved whose baby gets the last vial of lifesaving medication.

The question on the table is, How far are you willing to go to ensure your family’s
survival? Your answer can be neither right nor wrong, but it does require some introspection.

Getting your head right.

Disasters come in all sizes, from a fire in your basement to an intruder in your home;
from an active shooter in the shopping mall to major weather events. Regardless of the scale of the disaster, certain priorities always apply:

1. Stuff doesn’t matter. Whether it’s your new Lamborghini or your grandma’s book of family recipes, stuff is just stuff. It doesn’t have a heartbeat, and it’s not worth sentencing your kids to an orphanage to save it from being harmed.

2. You and your family are all that matters. In the Victoria Emerson books, I refer to the concentric circles of relationships. When bad stuff happens, everything and everyone is secondary to the survival of my family. That might seem selfish at first glance, but it’s not. Fact is, everybody practices the concept, even if they don’t think of it that way.

3. Pets are important, too. But they’re not people.

4. Escape is always better than conflict. Every fight you walk away from is a victory,
whether it’s from an intruder in your hallway or a hurricane barreling toward your house.

5. If conflict is unavoidable, bring it fast and in a big way. And train your kids. If
someone touches them inappropriately or tries to grab them, train them to gouge out the attacker’s eyes with their thumbs or bite off their fingers. All you need to do is buy enough time to run away (see #4 above). Teach them to scream. Our message to our son when he was growing up was that it is better to die on the street than to get shoved into a car. I still believe that to be true.

6. Have an evacuation plan. What do you want your kids to do if they wake up to the
sound of a smoke detector? (Hint: wandering the halls of your burning house looking for Mom and Dad is a bad plan.)

7. Have a plan to reunite. During an emergency, you don’t want to waste valuable escape time looking for each other. Spend those critical first seconds seeking safety. Once the hazard is behind you, know where you can go to find family members from whom you became separated. If they are not present at that spot when you arrive, let the emergency responders know. In the Victoria Emerson series, this planning takes a long view. Because Victoria was separated from one of her children, they had a standing plan in place that if something catastrophic happened while they were separated, they all knew to gather at Top Hat Mountain for their eventual reunion.

Now that your head is in the right place, what’s next?

The first step is to prepare yourself, your family, and your pantry for tough times. Few
people have Rambo’s knowledge of survival skills, but a quick search will reveal dozens of books on the subject. Outdoor Life Magazine compiled as good a list of references as I’ve seen. I haven’t read them all, but I’ve read a few and they’re all helpful and interesting.

Do you plan to evacuate or shelter in place?

If you plan to evacuate, where are you going to go? If your first choice is to drive 500
miles to Grandma’s house, think harder. Weather events and civil unrest make roads impassable. Is there a place you can hike to, even if it would take a few days? You’ll need food, shelter, and a means to carry or create clean drinking water. The challenges of a long hike in the winter are entirely different than those same challenges in the summertime.

If you expect to shelter in place, plan to do so without electricity or running water. In an
urban environment, you don’t want to confront the desperate neighbors who are flocking to the grocery store to strip their shelves, so commit yourself to keeping five days’ worth of basics in your pantry. Even if it’s cans of tuna and jugs of water, it’s enough to keep you alive and away from marauders on the street.

How do you plan to protect yourself and your family from others?

In the immediate aftermath of the government’s emergency declarations regarding the
pandemic of 2020-22, panicked Americans flocked to gun stores to purchase unprecedented numbers of firearms. Many of those buyers made their purchases out of fear that the normal mechanisms of law enforcement would be unable to protect them from harm.

Most of those firearms are still out there in the hands of people who have received
precious little training in their use. More than a few will see taking stuff from you as an integral part of their survival plan. That’s a recipe for someone having a very bad day.

My plan for my family is to stay away from it all and mind my own business, in hopes
that others will do likewise. If you’re on the scumpti-fifth floor of a high-rise that is situated among other high-rises, your situation will likely be more complicated. I don’t have the answers that will work for you, but these are things worth thinking about and planning for.

What say you, TKZ family? Have you peeked down this rather frightening rabbit hole? To the degree you’re willing to share, what planning have you done for the unthinkable?

“Can’t say I’ve ever been too fond of beginnings, myself. Messy little things. Give me a good ending anytime. You know where you are with an ending.” ― Neil Gaiman

By PJ Parrish

I love it when I can draft along in someone’s wake. James had a good post Sunday on how to end scenes or chapters. He talked about how he studied how King, Koontz and Grisham artfully ended chapters. And then yesterday, I was a guess blogger over at Kay’s blog The Craft of Writing, where she complimented me on the ending of one of my books.

So what better time than to talk about the alchemy of a good ending? I wish I could remember who said this, but my memory is unreliable: The opposite of a happy ending is not a sad ending. The opposite of a happy ending is an unsatisfying ending.

I recently watched The Princess Bride for the first time. Great storytelling. The last scene is the four heroes – Westley, Buttercup, Fezzik and Inigo Montoya — riding off on white horses. No lousy epilogues, just a sweet satisfying ending reflecting the movie’s tone. But here’s what screenwriter William Goldman said about it in an interview:

Well, I’m an abridger, so I’m entitled to a few ideas of my own. Did they make it? Was the pirate ship there? You can answer it for yourself, but, for me, I say yes it was. And yes, they got away. And got their strength back and had lots of adventures and more than their share of laughs.
But that doesn’t mean I think they had a happy ending, either. Because, in my opinion, anyway, they squabbled a lot, and Buttercup lost her looks eventually, and one day Fezzik lost a fight and some hot-shot kid whipped Inigo with a sword and Westley was never able to really sleep sound because of Humperdinck maybe being on the trail.

I’m not trying to make this a downer, understand. I mean, I really do think that love is the best thing in the world, next to cough drops. But I also have to say, for the umpty-umpth time, that life isn’t fair. It’s just fairer than death, that’s all.

You probably don’t want to even think about your ending, because right now you’re spinning your wheels in chapter 7. But you should think about it. Because often it’s the ending that resonates strongest with a reader. Everything you write before it leads up to it. And if the ending is good, everything points back to it. Last impressions are important.

It’s all about structure and you being in control of your narrative and pacing. It’s also about mood and theme because a good ending emotionally connects. What you don’t want to do is write until you are exhausted and go out with a whimper. What you don’t want to do stay too long at your party and bore everyone to death. A good ending is, like everything you write, a definite choice. It is not a final groan. It is a goal.

Let’s start by defining some different types of endings. If you all think of any I’ve missed, please weigh in. SPOILER ALERTS.

Tied Up With a Bow. Common in stand alones because the story is resolved, no questions are left unanswered, the bad guys are vanquished and the hero has won. Boy gets girl. The child is rescued. The world is saved. The implication is that order has been restored and everyone lives, maybe not happily ever after, but at least existing above the dirt. Unless you’re H.G. Wells. Now my tastes run toward ambiguity in endings. But the bow route can be very satisfying for readers. Don’t apologize if it’s what your story needs.

Closing The Circle. In this structure, the story ends where it began, as events eventually lead back to the imagery, event, or scene that begins the story. Best example I can think of is Steinbeck’s Of Mice And Men. The tragic ending is inevitable because Steinbeck sets up in the beginning the idea that happiness is impossible for Lennie and George. George always protects Lennie, but the task becomes too difficult when Lennie accidentally kills Curley’s wife. Steinbeck begins and ends at the same place — the pond. It is symbolic in that despite all their efforts to better themselves, Lennie and George end up exactly where they began.

Open-Ended Ending. There is still some element of resolution, but nothing is neat. There may be lingering questions, doors might be left open. This is good for series in which you may want the character arc of your protagonist to change over the course of several books. You have put your protag through a challenge, but he still has more to tell. This is one reason readers love series — one story might compel them to the next book to see what is going to happen next to the hero.

The Ambiguous Ending. This is a little different than open-ended. Ambiguity may occur with a character, plot point, image, or situation that can be understood in two or more possible ways. An ending can be interpreted in different ways. Tana French’s In The Woods is a good example. The ending, wherein some events of the case prove unresolved, left some readers frustrated.

The Twist. You’ve led readers down a plot path that makes them expect a certain ending. The satisfaction for readers is thus seeing only how you pull things off. But, maybe you decided to add a last minute plot twist that no one sees coming. Best one I can think of is Dennis Lehane’s Shutter Island, also a heck of a good example of an unreliable narrator.

SPOILER ALERT: Where The Crawdads Sing. After standing trial for murdering Chase, it is revealed that an exonerated Kya did, in fact, off him. Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn. Here’s how she explains her shocking and very abrupt ending: https://www.rollingstone.com/tv-movies/tv-movie-features/sharp-objects-finale-recap-gillian-flynn-hbo-713667/

The Ticking Clock. This is stock in thrillers. To end the story, you decide what should happen last. One example is Lee Child’s 61 Hours, wherein Jack Reacher is racing against the clock as he investigates a small-town murder in South Dakota. But Reacher doesn’t know he’s under a countdown, which creates a second layer of tension for the reader. Like Hitchcock’s bomb-under-the-table, readers know about the time “bomb” as they wait for Reacher to figure things out.

Spoiler alert: 61 Hours ends in a cliff-hanger, with the plot resolved but Reacher desperately running for his life. There’s an epilogue (see below for my take on that!) wherein Child suggests that nobody survived the explosion that ended the novel. What? Reacher’s dead? No answer in 61 Hours. But the next Reacher book Worth Dying For, opens with a bruised and battered Reacher talking to a doctor who wonders why he’s so beat up. Reacher never really explains how he walked away from the explosion. Some fans were miffed about this, but hey, he’s Jack Reacher, right? And maybe James Bond survived that missile attack in No Time To Die.

Epilogues. You all know how much I dislike prologues. (it’s mainly a taste thing). So it is with epilogues for me. This is a pin-the-vestigial-tail-on-the-donkey kind of thing. You’ve ended your story with a good resolution yet you keep yakking away. Usually to impart something like: After her would-be killer went to jail, Barbie went on to marry Ken, become a brain surgeon, and they remodeled their dream house in Hoboken. Yuck. You have to know when to leave the party, folks. After the tragedy/mystery is resolved, allow breathing room for your reader to envision what comes next. At this point, the reader’s imagination is much more powerful than yours.  “Epilogue” looks all artsy-fartsy on the page but it’s almost always an ego thing. Unless you’re Lee Child.

Example: The one good one I can remember is The Book Thief. The epilogue runs four “chapters” and it bookends the four “chapter” prologue. It worked within the complex structure of the story wherein the narrator is Death, who tells us about the girl Liesel’s journey, and laments humanity’s cruelty and hopefulness. I loved this book and its closing lines:

All I was able to do was turn to Liesel Meminger and tell her the only truth I truly know. I said to the book thief and I say it now to you.

*** A LAST NOTE FROM YOUR NARRATOR***

I am haunted by humans.

Tips For Good Endings

1. Know how things end from the beginning. I know, I know…you don’t want to hear this. It’s hard enough, especially if you’re a pantser like me, to figure things out when you’re still mucking around in chapter 2. But I almost always have at least a vague idea of what that last chapter is going to say. Sometimes I know the ending before I know where to start and I almost write in reverse gear. What you should know is the central question of your story — who killed poor old Roger? (See Agatha Christie). Can the team come together to save the world? (Andromeda Strain by Michael Crichton) How far will a woman go to protect her murderous sister? (My Sister, the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite.) If you can articulate the central question of your story, you have a good jump on knowing how it ends.
2. Earn it! How you resolve your story has to come organically. What does that mean? You have to lay down clue trails logically. The end, regardless of its tone, must feel inevitable and true. Also, your antagonist must be a presence in the book early (even if you artfully conceal him or lead the reader away from him.) Don’t get lazy and resort to the Long Lost Uncle From Australia ploy where the bad guy suddenly turns up at the end.
3. Know your tone going in. Happy or sad? Hopeful or uncertain? You want readers smiling or crying at the end? That is up to you, but whatever you chose, it must be supported by the plot foundation you lay. My own books are dark and sometimes ambiguous at end. But I like a grace note of hope.
4. Stand Alone or Series. Of course this affects your ending. If you plan to write a series character, you must carefully consider each trait and event in that person’s life (and please, commit this to a record or dossier!). The endings of series books often provide transitions to the next. You must decide if that series character will age with each book. My own hero Louis ages one year to 18 month with every book, so I’m thankful we started book one with him age 24. Or your series character might be static. Sue Grafton’s Kinsey Millhone was born May 5, 1950 (according to Grafton’s website) but she is perennially “in her mid-30s.” A stand alone, of course, dictates a different structure. At THE END, there should be nothing left to say.
5. Write more than one ending. So you get to act 3 and you’re in a fog. You know that finish line is out there but you can’t see it. Don’t choke. Write one ending, then write a different one or two or three. Think of it as your Director’s Cuts. Give them to a trusted friend for testing. Usually, the shortest one, the one with the emotional kick, is best. One of my favorite movies is Cinema Paradiso. An Italian boy Toto, obsessed with movies, grows into a teen who falls in love with the beautiful and obtainable Elena. He becomes a famous movie director but his bed, as his mother tells him, is always filled with strangers. In the ending, Toto returns to his tiny village and watches a montage of old movie clips of couples kissing. It is heart-crushing but so perfect. Yet the director unwisely issued a special cut in which the adult Toto tracked down Elena. It’s awful. Here’s the good ending, the most romantic two minutes ever put to film.

So, no director’s cut, okay? If you don’t believe me, go watch Apocalypse Now Redux.  

I’ll leave you with one final example from one of our own books, Island of Bones. I bring this up only because Kay told me she really liked it. I think it’s also an example of coming full circle and leaving a definite mood of hope. You can skip this part. I won’t be offended.

I wrote this last scene right after I wrote the first chapter. Chapter 1 is all action: a woman trying to escape from an island off Florida coast, so terrified that she risks taking out a small boat during a coming hurricane. The plot revolves around Louis and Mel tracking down missing women and, in the end, saving a boy and an newborn infant. The ending is back on the gulf, this time at sunset with Louis and Mel, who is slowly blind, reflecting on the case and the children they saved. Louis is compelled to tell Mel he is haunted by the fact he got a girl pregnant in college.

“What happened to her,” Mel asked.

“She left school and got an abortion.”

“You sure?”

Louis kept his eyes on the gulf. Sure? Hell, he had never thought about it before. There was no reason to think she hadn’t done what she told him she was going to do.

“Shit,” Louis said under his breath. “Like I really needed to be thinking about that possibility right now.”

Mel didn’t answer. His eyes were closed and he was leaning back on his elbows, his face upturned to catch the faint breeze. “What was her name?”

“Kyla. I screwed it up,” Louis said softly.

Mel was quiet for a long time. “You know, memory is a strange thing,” he said finally. “I mean you can’t always rely on it. I have a whole library of images in my memory, things I use to remember what something looks like, things I use to make me feel like I’m not groping around in the dark when things get bad.”

Louis was quiet, looking out at the gulf.

“I guess what I’m trying to say is that you might not be remembering that thing in college all that clearly. Memories can be…unreliable. You did the best you could at the time. I think that’s all any of us do. When you know better, you do better.”

The waves were a gentle hiss on the sand. A flock of pelicans were flying up the beach toward them, and Louis watched as they went by in a perfect V, gliding over the water. The birds were beautiful, no sound, no effort, moving through their world with not a single wasted motion. He watched them until they were gone.

“The boy will be all right,” Mel said. “And the baby is alive. You did the best you could.”

The breeze was kicking up. Louis closed his eyes and drew in a deep breath of the salty air. He listened to the breaking waves.

“Tell me what it looks like,” Mel said.

Louis opened his eyes. “What?”

“The sunset.”

“I’m not falling for that again. I know you can see it, some of it anyway.”

“All I see is a big blur of color.”

“Well, that’s all it is.”

Mel laughed. “Christ, you’re hopeless. Tell me what it looks like.”

Louis looked at the sky and shrugged. “I told you, it’s colorful.”

“Try again.”

Louis took a deep breath. “It’s red at the bottom and kind of yellow at the top.”

“You can do better than that.”

“Okay, it’s really red and really yellow. Damn it, Mel, you tell me.”

Mel lifted his face to the sky, eyes closed. “The clouds are wispy, and it’s like someone tossed a bunch of yellow and pink feathers against a freshly painted red wall. And the sun is laying itself down on the water, giving in, like you would if you were going to sleep and knew you had nothing but good dreams ahead.”

Louis looked at Mel then back out at the sky.

“I can’t do better than that,” he said.

The unreliability of our memories is a theme in the book. No cops fully trust witnesses. No person, as Mel knows, can fully trust their own memories. The mood I was going for is weary but hopeful. And with the mention of the pregnant girlfriend, we set up the plot for a future Louis book.

And on that note, I’m leaving the party.