Anatomy of an Unplanned Sequel
I wrote The Garden Club Gang in 2010. It was a story about four ‘women of a certain age’ who, each for their own very good reasons, choose to break the law; something they would never do under any other circumstances. Not to give away anything that you don’t learn on page 1, they rob a large New England fair of its daily gate; so the question isn’t ‘whodunit’ but, rather, are ‘the ladies’ going to get away with it?
It was a fun book to write and it struck a respondent chord with readers. They related to my four protagonists, liked their pluck and determination, and found the conclusion very satisfying. But surprisingly – at least to me – less than a week after the book was published, I received my first query: what are ‘the ladies’ going to do next?’
At first I laughed off the question. I had written a stand-alone book. I had no further plans for Alice, Jean, Eleanor and Paula. Besides, what were they going to do? Rob another fair? And, besides, I was already well into another manuscript. But, in a matter of months, I had a chorus of readers asking when the sequel to The Garden Club Gang would be out.
And so I did what human nature dictates: I started toying with a sequel. I thought about sending my ladies on a trip to England where they could get into mischief. I started writing an outline about one of them needing a heart transplant and not being able to pay for it.
Here is a secret admission about writers: as they write, they hear the voices of their characters. When things are going really well, those characters offer their own lines and suggest plot points. My problem was that my characters were saying, “Get me out of this crummy story” and “I would never say that.” I stopped trying to force a second book and, for two years, I just smiled and said, “I’m working on it” whenever I was asked about the book I was calling The Return of the Garden Club Gang.
Occasionally, when I’m looking for inspiration, I go back and read my own stuff and, early last year, I re-read The Garden Club Gang. When I got to the final paragraphs of the book, it was as though there had been this enormous clue hiding in plain sight. Samantha, the insurance investigator who discovers ‘the ladies’ identity and then helps them hide their crime, is having lunch with Eleanor, one of the members of the gang. Samantha describes her latest case, which is about suspected insurance fraud at a car dealership. She muses, “I can’t prove anything. What I need to do is get someone on the inside…”
There it was: the rationale for a second installment. The ladies weren’t going to commit another crime. They were going to atone for their robbery by doing good deeds.
As it turns out, I was also shopping for a new car that spring. I hate the games that dealers play. I read up on all the tactics and gritted my teeth. By the time I had the new car in hand, I had invented the Pokrovsky car empire: patriarch ‘Smilin’ Al’, a nasty piece of work with a carefully cultivated philanthropic image, and Al Junior, his not-so-bright son.
But I also had another story to tell. One of the great thing about garden clubs is that they bridge generations. There may be members in their twenties and members in their eighties. Everyone gets to know everyone else because of a shared love of gardening. And, inevitably, members pass away. In mid-February, I had attended a memorial service for a wonderful lady who was a longtime stalwart of the Medfield Garden Club. She died at 94 in a very nice nursing home where she lived with her husband. Somewhat surprisingly, the service was held in the nursing home. There, I had the opportunity to meet her children, who were all in their 60s.
On the way home from the service, one of those commercials came on the radio about “saving your assets from the nursing home.” I usually tune those out or change the station but, this time, I listened. “The nursing home wants your assets!” the announcer intoned. And a plot began to form in my head.
What would happen if a 93-year-old member of a garden club suffered a heart attack and died in a nursing home? What if one of the members of the Garden Club Gang, attending the memorial service, overheard a fragment of an odd conversation? What if a grandchild – an adult herself – knew that her grandmother wanted to move out of the nursing home, and thought that foul play might be involved. And, what if that grandchild sought out another of the members of the Garden Club Gang and asked for advice on how to proceed. That just might work.
Deadly Deeds opens four months after the events of The Garden Club Gang, Al, Junior gets caught red-handed as he tries to torch eighteen unsaleable cars and blame it on eco-terrorism. He’s caught because Jean, Alice, Eleanor and Paula went undercover and documented the illegal things he was doing, just as Samantha Ayer suggested at the end of The Garden Club Gang. Why did they agree to go undercover? Because they’re trying to do good deeds to make amends for that robbery.
And so, having successfully gone undercover to root out a car dealer’s misdeeds, they’ll go undercover at an upscale nursing home to see if their friend’s death was “because it was her time”, or if someone killed her. They’ll investigate those ‘save your assets’ firms as well as how nursing homes make money. More goods deed.
But there’s a saying that ‘no good deed goes unpunished’. That’s where the story gets interesting. ‘The ladies’ are going to find that ‘Smilin’ Al’ doesn’t take kindly to having his reputation ruined, even if it was his own son who was responsible for the damage. He’s out for revenge. And, the ladies will also find that, their invisibility aside, as they investigate their friend’s death, they’re coming to the attention of someone who has a lot to hide.
As in all my books, I did considerable research before I started writing Deadly Deeds. I resurrected the nursing home and health care research I did on behalf of an elderly aunt for whom I was guardian and went deeper into the economics of nursing homes and of the legal basis for the asset protection programs you see advertised. At their heart is this central conundrum: Medicaid reimbursements don’t begin to cover the cost of providing quality nursing home care, which averages more than $100,000 a year. Yet, by law, nursing homes cannot offer different levels of care to Medicaid and private pay residents. Does that mean private-pay patients are being significantly overcharged so that everyone gets equal care? When someone on the radio or cable television says they’re going to “save your assets”, what they’re saying is that they’re going to turn you into a Medicaid case so that your nursing home bill is picked up by the government. Is there an unwritten code at work in nursing homes that Medicaid residents receive care equal to government reimbursement?
Deadly Deeds is not intended as an indictment of asset depletion programs, but everything on the laundry list of legal maneuvers that will be proposed for one of the Gang by a ‘save-your-assets-from-the-nursing-home’ firm is very real. It inevitably raises the question of ‘who benefits’ the most. I hope most readers will come away from the book with a strong belief that unbiased professional advice is an elderly person’s best protection.
It was a fun book to write and it struck a respondent chord with readers. They related to my four protagonists, liked their pluck and determination, and found the conclusion very satisfying. But surprisingly – at least to me – less than a week after the book was published, I received my first query: what are ‘the ladies’ going to do next?’
At first I laughed off the question. I had written a stand-alone book. I had no further plans for Alice, Jean, Eleanor and Paula. Besides, what were they going to do? Rob another fair? And, besides, I was already well into another manuscript. But, in a matter of months, I had a chorus of readers asking when the sequel to The Garden Club Gang would be out.
And so I did what human nature dictates: I started toying with a sequel. I thought about sending my ladies on a trip to England where they could get into mischief. I started writing an outline about one of them needing a heart transplant and not being able to pay for it.
Here is a secret admission about writers: as they write, they hear the voices of their characters. When things are going really well, those characters offer their own lines and suggest plot points. My problem was that my characters were saying, “Get me out of this crummy story” and “I would never say that.” I stopped trying to force a second book and, for two years, I just smiled and said, “I’m working on it” whenever I was asked about the book I was calling The Return of the Garden Club Gang.
Occasionally, when I’m looking for inspiration, I go back and read my own stuff and, early last year, I re-read The Garden Club Gang. When I got to the final paragraphs of the book, it was as though there had been this enormous clue hiding in plain sight. Samantha, the insurance investigator who discovers ‘the ladies’ identity and then helps them hide their crime, is having lunch with Eleanor, one of the members of the gang. Samantha describes her latest case, which is about suspected insurance fraud at a car dealership. She muses, “I can’t prove anything. What I need to do is get someone on the inside…”
There it was: the rationale for a second installment. The ladies weren’t going to commit another crime. They were going to atone for their robbery by doing good deeds.
As it turns out, I was also shopping for a new car that spring. I hate the games that dealers play. I read up on all the tactics and gritted my teeth. By the time I had the new car in hand, I had invented the Pokrovsky car empire: patriarch ‘Smilin’ Al’, a nasty piece of work with a carefully cultivated philanthropic image, and Al Junior, his not-so-bright son.
But I also had another story to tell. One of the great thing about garden clubs is that they bridge generations. There may be members in their twenties and members in their eighties. Everyone gets to know everyone else because of a shared love of gardening. And, inevitably, members pass away. In mid-February, I had attended a memorial service for a wonderful lady who was a longtime stalwart of the Medfield Garden Club. She died at 94 in a very nice nursing home where she lived with her husband. Somewhat surprisingly, the service was held in the nursing home. There, I had the opportunity to meet her children, who were all in their 60s.
On the way home from the service, one of those commercials came on the radio about “saving your assets from the nursing home.” I usually tune those out or change the station but, this time, I listened. “The nursing home wants your assets!” the announcer intoned. And a plot began to form in my head.
What would happen if a 93-year-old member of a garden club suffered a heart attack and died in a nursing home? What if one of the members of the Garden Club Gang, attending the memorial service, overheard a fragment of an odd conversation? What if a grandchild – an adult herself – knew that her grandmother wanted to move out of the nursing home, and thought that foul play might be involved. And, what if that grandchild sought out another of the members of the Garden Club Gang and asked for advice on how to proceed. That just might work.
Deadly Deeds opens four months after the events of The Garden Club Gang, Al, Junior gets caught red-handed as he tries to torch eighteen unsaleable cars and blame it on eco-terrorism. He’s caught because Jean, Alice, Eleanor and Paula went undercover and documented the illegal things he was doing, just as Samantha Ayer suggested at the end of The Garden Club Gang. Why did they agree to go undercover? Because they’re trying to do good deeds to make amends for that robbery.
And so, having successfully gone undercover to root out a car dealer’s misdeeds, they’ll go undercover at an upscale nursing home to see if their friend’s death was “because it was her time”, or if someone killed her. They’ll investigate those ‘save your assets’ firms as well as how nursing homes make money. More goods deed.
But there’s a saying that ‘no good deed goes unpunished’. That’s where the story gets interesting. ‘The ladies’ are going to find that ‘Smilin’ Al’ doesn’t take kindly to having his reputation ruined, even if it was his own son who was responsible for the damage. He’s out for revenge. And, the ladies will also find that, their invisibility aside, as they investigate their friend’s death, they’re coming to the attention of someone who has a lot to hide.
As in all my books, I did considerable research before I started writing Deadly Deeds. I resurrected the nursing home and health care research I did on behalf of an elderly aunt for whom I was guardian and went deeper into the economics of nursing homes and of the legal basis for the asset protection programs you see advertised. At their heart is this central conundrum: Medicaid reimbursements don’t begin to cover the cost of providing quality nursing home care, which averages more than $100,000 a year. Yet, by law, nursing homes cannot offer different levels of care to Medicaid and private pay residents. Does that mean private-pay patients are being significantly overcharged so that everyone gets equal care? When someone on the radio or cable television says they’re going to “save your assets”, what they’re saying is that they’re going to turn you into a Medicaid case so that your nursing home bill is picked up by the government. Is there an unwritten code at work in nursing homes that Medicaid residents receive care equal to government reimbursement?
Deadly Deeds is not intended as an indictment of asset depletion programs, but everything on the laundry list of legal maneuvers that will be proposed for one of the Gang by a ‘save-your-assets-from-the-nursing-home’ firm is very real. It inevitably raises the question of ‘who benefits’ the most. I hope most readers will come away from the book with a strong belief that unbiased professional advice is an elderly person’s best protection.
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