If readers ever think about how writers work, I suppose they imagine someone sitting at a desk and slaving away over a computer keyboard. That’s not me. I’m six-one. I have long legs which provide an excellent lap for a laptop. So yes, there’s plenty of typing in writing books, but I work on a keyboard that rests on my thighs rather than on a desk, seated in a comfy chair in the family room. But writing books involves a lot more than typing, namely thinking and making friends with whoever’s about to show up in the next story.

As the author of more than sixty books, I’ve told a lot of stories over the past forty years. In the process, I’ve created a lot of characters. It’s not enough to just give a character a name and be good to go. You have to create a background for that individual—where and when were they born, how were they raised. That’s how I know J.P. Beaumont was raised by a single mom, a seamstress, while living in an apartment over a bakery. That aspect of his life, one where dogs were not allowed, came into play some 32 years and two dozen books later when, while in his seventies and during the course of book called Proof of Life, Beau unexpectedly encountered an Irish wolfhound named Lucy and became a dog owner for the first time. How did I know he was in his seventies? Because I gave him my birthday. As long as I know how old I am, I know how old he is.

In writing all those books, I’ve created lots of major characters and lots of minor ones as well. But sometimes, it’s the minor ones who really capture the imaginations of individual readers and mine, too. Since I’ve already gone to the trouble of creating them, why not go ahead and see what they’ve done over the years while I’ve been occupied with other stories and characters. A guy named Alan Dale had a seemingly one-and-done role in Beaumont number four, Taking the Fifth. But decades later, when Alan shows up in Sins of the Fathers, he was front and center. And what was he doing during all those years when no one was watching? He was busy raising the daughter J.P. Beaumont never knew he had!

In Breach of Duty, Beau’s partner, Sue Danielson, dies tragically in an horrific act of domestic violence, while her two young sons were hiding blocks away in fear of their lives. Years later, in a book called Nothing to Lose, my readers and I found out what happened to those two young orphans. In the course writing that book, I chanced across a character named Twinkle Winkleman, who turned out to be a real CHARACTER, in every sense of the word. Twink is someone who simply refused to leave the story when I thought it was time for her to exit stage left. Instead of going away and staying gone, she’s now made encore appearances in both Girls’ Night Out and again in my upcoming The Taken Ones.

In other words, once I’ve gone to the trouble of creating a character, why let them go to waste? Why not recycle them? Why not revisit them, and find out what’s been going on in their lives while my back’s been turned? While I was writing The Girl From Devil’s Lake, a long time reader wrote to me asking, “Whatever happened to the Ignacio Ybarra, the boy who was wrongly accused of murdering his girlfriend in Skeleton Canyon? Did he ever become a doctor? So what did I do? I had my inner muse check in with Ignacio after all those intervening years, and sure enough, not only had he gone on to medical school and become a physician, he and his wife, also a doctor, were now living and working in Bisbee. A grown up Ignacio is the ER doc who comes to the scene to council Joanna at the end of The Girl from Devil’s Lake.

Right now I’m trying to think my way into the next Joanna Brady book. I haven’t come up with a name or an actual plot line yet, but one of my former characters has been tapping me on the shoulder and saying, “Hey, what about me? Wouldn’t you like to know what I’ve been up to?” Turns out I would, and I suspect some of my readers feel the same way.

Shortly after Field of Bones was published, one of my readers, a woman named Nancy, told me, “Last night, when I was saying my prayers, I said, ‘and please keep Latisha safe.’ Then I realized that she was a fictional character.” Well, Nancy, your prayer has been answered. Not only is Latisha Marcum alive and well, she’ll be turning up in the next Joanna book.

I’ve got my eye on someone else who may make an appearance there as well, but before I sit down to write the story, I need to reread both Field of Bones and Downfall, just to make sure what I think I wrote in them is actually there. Why would I do that? Let’s see.

In Beaumont number nine, Payment in Kind, in the course of a short passage of internal dialogue, Beau admits to not serving in the military during the Vietnam war. Years later, I decided to write Second Watch, a book in which I entwined Beau’s fictional life with that of Douglas Davis, an amazing young man who graduated from Bisbee High School as the Valedictorian for the class of 1961. After graduation, he left Bisbee High for West Point before eventually being deployed to Vietnam where he died months before his twenty-third birthday. Once Second Watch was published, a number of my SERs (Sharp-eyed readers) wrote to remind me of that earlier off-the-cuff statement in Payment in Kind. By the way, that passage has now been edited out of current editions of that book. Believe me, I don’t want to make that mistake again!

So that’s what I’ll be doing this weekend—rereading those two older books, Field of Bones and Downfall. By the time I finish doing that, maybe I’ll have an idea about what the rest of the story should be.

Stay tuned.