Kelley,
I just finished reading your book the other day, and I thought it was great. It delved into the recess of the human mind that many authors do not write on. Very rarely have I ever seen a book written such as this. The internal perspective of the protagonist was so vividly described that it almost made you feel as if you were her.
As I read the last line of the book it left me with one burning question: Will there be a sequel?
As I said before, I thought the book was great. I can’t wait to see what you write next.
Anonymous
I’m glad you liked the book, and sorry to disappoint you about a sequel. I don’t expect there will be one. The stories that are jostling for my attention now are about other people. I think I’d like to write a short series someday, something with a specific, planned arc (as Nicola is doing with her series about Aud Torvingen), but I’d be surprised right now if it turned out to be about Jackal or any of the other characters in Solitaire.
I’m glad you cared enough about Jackal and Snow and the others to want to know more about what happens to them. That’s such a compliment to a writer, and it seems churlish to say nope, no sequel. But I told the part of their story that I wanted to tell. It’s like driving at night past the lighted windows of houses or apartments, getting a peek at the life inside. It’s an intersection of sorts.
It seems many novelist find it hard to move on, after having spent so much time developing a particular set of characters and settings. I may be wrong, but this post speaks to me of your other writer-self, the one that takes great joy in the telling of short stories.
By their very nature, short stories, poetry and songs make it clear that the artist channeling them is shining light on an important moment in the lives of those characters—that intersection of sorts. And every window brings another opportunity to tell a great story, one as satisfying as the previous and the next.
I’m not saying one form is better than other, I’m just speculating that the short-story teller is very alive within you.
Oh, and while some short stories writers spend as much time developing their characters as novelist do theirs, the former are usually satisfied with that brief but meaningful instant they managed to capture in all its glorious intensity.