Today's the last day to get The Skeleton King for 99 cents, friends! The price goes back up tonight, and then it will be sale time for Secondhand Smoke, which we'll start tomorrow.
I had a great question yesterday on Instagram about process, in response to a Tweet I shared in which I stated that Dante from the Sons of Rome series was only supposed to appear in one scene, but has now officially become a part of the pack. The reader asked if, in cases of minor characters becoming major characters, the older, original character voices were drowned out by the new. The answer to that is no.
When I'm writing a series, I'm always looking at it as a complete ensemble. I have a hard time writing standalones because I so rarely see a story as a discreet set of happenings between just a few people. It's very much like an ornate tapestry, one of those wall hangings from the Middle-Ages in which a hundred things are happening all at once in great detail. You step in closer, at moments, to take an intimate look at one vignette, but then you step back and look at the whole again; focus on another vignette. For me, the series as a whole is the story; I'm always looking at the big picture, rather than trying to make connections between discreet, individual stories, if that makes sense. If a new character is added, it doesn't detract from the existing characters; I just have to look closely at the new character as well. New threads woven in, made a part of the whole. Some voices inevitably grow quieter over time - for instance, I don't feel anything urgent or front-and-center happening for Mercy and Ava anymore - but there's always the potential for a shift. When something happens within the course of the series, it will affect different characters, well, differently, and so there's an ebb and flow in "main character stories." It isn't a case of ending one story, tying if off with a bow, and never returning.
I have no idea if that made any sense. But! It seemed a good moment to mention it as we take a closer look at two important subplots in TSK that have great bearing on the series as a whole.
From the beginning, Aidan has been a bit of a stereotypical bad boy: handsome, always down for a joke, a ladies man...but, ultimately, an immature douchebag. "Aidan needs to grow up" is a refrain not just within the series, but among readers, and he most certainly does. From a writer perspective, Aidan is an immature clown because, let's face it, we've all known men in their thirties who acted eighteen. That's true to life. From a textual standpoint, Aidan's main weakness is, oddly enough, that he was born into the club.
This club - like real-life clubs - is made of up societal misfits. They didn't wake up one day and decide to become bikers. They don't fit in, but they've found a place with the Lean Dogs. Aidan, though, grew up around the Dogs. He never intended to be anything but a biker. For him, the club wasn't a lighthouse in the dark; wasn't a port in a storm. It was a given. His view of so-called "normal life" is heavily skewed by this. He was a prospect, sure, but he didn't have to prove his worth the way his brothers did. While his mom leaving at a young age was doubtless traumatizing, he's not faced half the trauma of people like Mercy, or Michael, or Tango. While he wants Ghost's approval, Ghost is still more dad than president for him, and there's less incentive to impress his father - a person he rather takes for granted. His complicated relationship with Ghost is a big contributor to his issues - issues he starts to examine in Half My Blood, after the accident that nearly kills him.
But Aidan's been immature and averse to reflection his whole life; his attempts to turn his life around are, understandably, misguided, naïve, and bumbling. He knows that Maggie has been the greatest and best influence on his dad, so he decides "I know, I'll find me a good woman, and that'll be the thing that helps me get it together." But - misguided as stated - he equates "classy, rich, and expensive" with "good." He's been sleeping with one kind of woman, so now he's going to switch it up.
Oh, Aidan, you fool.
His disastrous, downright ugly relationship with Tonya, who might be classy, but certainly isn't loving, kind, or supportive, comes to a dramatic head at the very end of the book when she tells him she's pregnant. We'll talk about that when we get to SS, but suffice to say, TSK, and Emmie's farm, provided an opportunity for Aidan to start trying to better himself...while screwing himself over completely.
The other big "oh no" moment of the book happens for poor Sergeant Fielding. Oh, Vince, buddy - you've become the thing you hate. Despite all the grief I give him, I do like Vince. He's more or less a stand-up guy. He hates the Dogs because they're criminals, but he's not going to resort to any underhanded, dirty-cop scheming in order to put them away. He wants to do everything by the book. For him, the line between Good and Bad is solid and easily defined: do bad things, you're a bad person; do good things, you're good. But in TSK, despite all his good intentions, he kills someone. And there's Ghost, his nemesis, offering a hand to help him up, telling him he can make it all go away.
So now Vince is stuck: he's done a bad thing, so is he now a bad person? Or, is it as Ghost's been saying all along, a case of life being complicated.
For Ghost, this is a boon: he's get leverage over Fielding, and now an in with the police.
But for Vince, it's the start of a slow spiral into depression, guilt, and self-doubt. But, though he'd be loath to admit it, it puts something in perspective for Vince: maybe the Dogs aren't "bad" for the sake of it. Maybe this is how they survive in an ugly world. Maybe nothing's as clear as he's always thought it was.
And, after all, this whole series is about perspectives...
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