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Chapter Seven

Holy Camoley, I had to write this chapter about forty seven times. I’ve said this before, but Rebekah Hughes is my favorite character I’ve ever written. Even though I knew I had to blow her up, it was not easy. In fact, since she’s my most favoritest, I knew I had to blow her up perfectly, if that makes any sense. Yes, the chapter is meant to be intentionally shocking, but I didn’t want it gratuitously shocking—in other words, she didn’t blow up just so that I could blow up a main character and say “Hey readers: I bet you didn’t see that coming!”

I’ve had some experience with this before. After On Second Thought I wrote a rather gritty murder mystery. Although it was LDS, I’ve never submitted it for publication because it’s just too different from my other books. It’s very serious, and kinda gory, and a lot of people die in unpleasant ways. Most notably, one of the three main characters dies. And she dies by getting pushed off a cliff, and breaking all her bones and bleeding all over the place.

Most of my test readers really enjoyed the book, but my brother (my most trusted literary lieutenant), pointed out that there’s no real reason for her to die, other than (1) to make the situation even more dire, and (2) to offer a simple resolution to a love triangle. In other words, killing that character, in that way, was dumb.

So with that in mind, Rebekah getting blown up had to have some real significance, both for the plot and the character. And it does – part of which isn’t ever discovered until the end of the book. I’m happy with how it turned out.

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