After Thoughts On Into This River I Drown

Warning And Threats



To proceed, know that I will be discussing key plot points for Into This River I Drown and (surprise!) another of my novels, Burn. There is also a brand new short story at the end of this post. If you haven’t read River and are planning to, you shouldn’t read this as it will be filled with a lot of spoilers. If you haven’t read Burn, that’s okay, but some of this might not make sense.

Still here?

Okay, so how much do you hate me right now?

The messages and emails I have received from readers have been very sweet, often telling their own story of how they lost a loved one in their lives at one point or another. But at some point in said email or message, is a variation of the following sentence: “I cursed you out SO much in this story, especially at (fill in the blank)!” What was awesome, was everyone seems to have a different “fill in the blank” part.

Ah. I love that. So much.

I’ll be discussing a few of the hows and whys of certain things that happened in River. Then, at the end, I have a story for you to read, for those that want to go just a bit further down the rabbit hole.

Ready?



Calliel Didn’t Exist



When I first started writing River, Calliel was to be a guy called Jake and he was a drifter who blew into town, and at some point, would be revealed to have been part of the drug operation that was running through the small town of Rosedale, which was revealed toward the end. There was nothing supernatural about Jake, who was just a regular dude.

And then it hit me one day, weirdly, right after I’d gotten done writing the first chapter, that I wanted it to be paranormal, given that I was sure that Benji was actually haunted by ghosts, not just memories.

What if he was an angel? my weird little inner voice asked me.

Uh… what?

Think about it: he’s like this big, badass, fallen angel dude who crashes into the woods in Roseland!

Uh… I don’t know a single thing about angels.

Oooo. Yeah. And you hate research of any kind.

Yeah.

So he’ll just be some boring drifter guy named Jake. Neat. Yawn. I’m already bored for you and no one will like this story and you’re stupid.

I like the boring drifter guy named Jake!

*silence*

Goddammit! Fine! I’ll make him a fucking angel!

And so I did. And yes, I hate research of any kind. I hate it with a passion. It also didn’t help that I am not a spiritual person in any way shape or form. I don’t go to church. I don’t have a specific faith I subscribe too. I had a very rudimentary understanding of God and angels, mostly what I’d heard from other people.

But I knew if I was going to do it, I’d have to do it right.

The angel Calliel is “real”, at least as far as angel lore goes. He’s lowly placed on the totem pole, and as soon as I came across him and his name, I knew I’d found the angel I was looking for. The hierarchy for angels is a fascinating thing, with literally hundreds if not thousands of named angels that are supposed to serve God in one way shape or form. And each one was supposedly created to serve a different purpose.

So I had my angel. Jake became Calliel, or Cal. I went back and made some changes, then soldiered on. I found quickly that going the angel direction opened up some awesome new ideas, but it also created some big problems, of which I won’t bore you with here. Suffice to say, I may not have been a religious person, but an early draft of River sounded way to fucking preachy, like I was giving a sermon and didn’t know what I was talking about. Trust me when I say it was pretty bad.



It Goes On…And On…And On…



You think River was long? You should have seen the completed first draft. When I started writing River, I knew it was going to be a long-ish story, maybe around the length of BOATK. So, imagine my surprise when I finished River and it was almost two hundred and fifty thousand words long. It was a bit ridiculous, really. My plan initially was to split it into two books, but then my betas got ahold of it and both said it worked better as a single book, so I cut, cut, cut. The version you read of River is 189,000 words. That’s a lot of shit cut to the floor. Most of it that was cut needed to be cut, because it really was extraneous, no matter how much I kicked and screamed. A couple of things that were cut, however, hurt like a motherfucker.

You know the ending of River, how the final chapter is called The Sunrise? Benji and Cal sit on the roof, watching the sunrise and all is well. Well, there were two additional chapters after that, the first of which I thought wrapped up the story in a very cyclical way, mirroring back toward the beginning chapter called “You and I”. And the other chapter? The very last one? Well, the last chapter was about some old friends of mine, ones I hadn’t written about in a while. Friends that came out of nowhere and inserted themselves into River. But more on them in a moment.



Twists and Death



While I tried to inject some humor into River, I knew even before I started that it was going to be a dark book. It’s bleak through most of it, the weight of Benji’s grief a palpable thing. There can be a point when that begins to be too much, so I tried for some levity every now and then, a little bit of light in all that dark.

It was still dark, regardless of the humor. I know this, and I don’t know that it could have been told any other way. There are a few points, though, I knew were going to be hard for most everyone to read.

Abe. Ah, Abe. That sucked. Like really, really sucked. Originally, Nina was going to be the one to die. That was in a version of the story where the storm at the end destroyed the whole town, killing off a lot of the residents of Roseland. I came to realize that not only was it overkill, but also Nina had become more important to not just this story, but to another story as well.

So I had to choose someone who was close to Benji. Why? Because I needed Benji to reach the lowest of the lows before he could face Michael in the White Room. I don’t think he could have had the same understanding about the idea of sacrifice had he not lost someone near to him after Big Eddie. I considered, very briefly, having it be Lola, his mother, but again, that seemed like overkill, given that he’d already lost his dad. So it was Abe, no matter how much I didn’t want it to be. I went back and added a bit more about his wife that had passed, Estelle. And then I wrote his sacrificial scene (“THY WILL BE DONE”). And it sucked having to have that happen. Horribly. However, I think it illustrated just how far Benji had come and just how evil Griggs was. If there has ever been a character I’ve written to be hated, it is Griggs.

And Christie? Did you see that coming? I hope not. I hope it was a gut punch. I knew from the very beginning that she was going to be the “boss.” Every time I had to write her character, I was scowling at my laptop monitor, thinking I HATE YOU! But I also knew I had to keep it as secret as possible, so I needed to pass her off as the sweet and caring aunt. And honestly? I do believe she loved her sisters and Benji in her own way. They were family, after all. I think, however, that she was drowning in her own river, and that came before anyone and anything else.

And be honest: how many of you cursed my name when Cal was shot on the bridge? Did you really think I’d kill him off? C’mon now. That wouldn’t be very nice of me, now would it?

Why, that would be just downright mean.



The Hardest Things I’ve Had To Write



Two chapters in River are the hardest things I’ve ever had to write. The first was the chapter titled “These Flickering Lights.” If you’ll remember, that was the scene where Benji has to walk down the long hallway to go identify his father’s corpse. It was tough because you know that Big Eddie has died, that Benji will see his body, but some part of you still hopes that he won’t have to, that it was really a lie, a dream, a horrible nightmare and that Big Eddie will be there and everything will be okay. I ached for Benji when writing that. That long walk down the hallway, hearing Big Eddie’s song sung in his head, those memories rising like ghosts. And then to have him pull back that scratchy sheet covering the body, only to see the greatest man in his world lying beaten and broken? That’s where it became real for Benji. That’s when his river started. For want of his father, he was lost.

The other chapter? You probably figured it out. It was the one called “The River Crossing.” I knew from the very beginning that Benji would get to see Big Eddie one last time. He needed it. And more so, I needed it, as Benji’s caretaker. I dreaded it as it approached, and when it did, it took me a full week to write it. I’ve never written anything more difficult than that final meeting. And I think that chapter is the best writing I’ve ever done. If you read the dedication to the book, then you probably know I didn’t write it just for Benji. I wrote it for myself. I said the things I was never able to say in real life. And that, to me, was Michael’s gift.



The Biggest Secret Of All



Oh, my Burn readers. How I adore you. How I love you. You patient, patient people. How I like to mess with you so, so much. Admit it. You didn’t see that coming, did you? Yeah, neither did I. Imagine my surprise when Michael showed up for the first time and started talking about Elementals. I remember writing that, then sitting back and going, “Uh, what the fuck? Seriously? Seriously?!?!? As if I didn’t have enough shit to worry about here! FUCK!!!!!!”

But then I thought about it a little bit more.

And then I got this evil little smile on my face.

The references to Burn and the Elementals add up to no more than 500 words out of 189,000. Originally (as you’ll soon see), there were more. As a matter of fact, the original entire last chapter of River was dedicated to Burn. However, it came down to the way to actually end River on a good note, and I didn’t want to weigh down the readers for those who hadn’t read Burn yet. I have to tell you, though, that it killed me to keep this connection a secret.

Given this all, I had to pick and choose what of those 500 words that I wanted to keep in River. Let me be clear about a few of things.

One: the paragraph towards the end of the book where Raphael talks about the Split One entering the field is the most important for Burn readers to know. Look at his last sentence there.

Two: the Tree is Metatron, the lost angel, in case you didn’t that from Raphael’s words. Metatron, the Tree (It) is corrupt as all fuck. And does he have some scary-ass plans for not just Felix’s world, but all of them.

Three: this exchange in the chapter “The White Room” (do you remember the White Room from Burn?):

“That image, that burnt image of a child, was meant for a man named Seven who might be the key to not only saving his world, but the ones on every level above and below him.”

“Who is the child?”

Michael closes his eyes. “One who has the power for great destruction growing within him. It remains to be seen what side he will choose. In the end, though, the boy will burn.”

Some interesting things coming, I think.

Will there be a sequel to River? No. Not directly. I think Benji and Cal’s story has been told to the full extent it needs to. I will smile quietly at my time spent in Roseland, but I don’t see myself going back.

But.

Will you see some of a character or two from ITRID again? Possibly. Probably. I won’t say which, but one or more of them might pop up somewhere else. In a different place. Where the earth moves, and the water flows. Where the winds howl.

Where the fires burn.

And with that, I proudly present the original final two chapters of Into This River I Drown. The link below takes you to my blog where the short story is waiting for you at the end of the post. Just scroll down and you'll see the photo that starts the story.

http://tjklunebooks.blogspot.com/2013...

Love,

Tj