Lessons Learned—and Discovered by James M. Jackson

I promised when I created my second series, Niki Undercover Thrillers, that I would make my writing life easier. I particularly wanted to improve ease of marketing the series.

Turns out my stories have minds of their own—just like my characters.

I wanted to simplify setting. I had allowed the stories in the Seamus McCree series to take place in a variety of locations: The Cincinnati, Ohio area was the setting for the first two novels. Four of the next six used Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. The other works used Boston, Savannah, and a road trip with various stops along the Eastern Seaboard.

Each story worked well using those locations, but that inconsistency makes it darn near impossible to use location to help market the series—to give readers a hook to grab onto. Lesson learned.

With the Niki Undercover Thriller series, I concentrated the action in Washington, D.C. (making sense for an undercover federal agent), and the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota. That worked well for the first book, Niki Undercover, but for the second, Niki Unleashed, the story “required” me to expand to rural areas in nearby Wisconsin. As I plan book three, Washington, D.C. will play a major role; but the Twin Cities probably won’t. If rural areas sneak in again, they’ll be ones familiar to my readers.

The Seamus McCree series started out as first-person narrated mysteries with Seamus as the only point-of-view (POV) character. The reader knew only as much as Seamus McCree did. With the third novel in the series, Cabin Fever, I employed multiple POV characters, introducing a typical thriller element into the stories: the reader knows more than the protagonist. I continued using multiple POVs until the seventh novel, Granite Oath, when I realized the way to tell the strongest story was using only Seamus’s POV. It’s still a thriller, but without the other POVs, it has mystery elements because the reader discovers along with the protagonist. I think of these as mystery/thrillers. The eighth novel, Hijacked Legacy, is back to pure thriller with multiple POVs.

Planning the Niki Undercover Thriller series—by definition, the novels needed to be thrillers, and for marketing, I wanted them to be consistent with multiple POVs and the reader knowing more than Niki. I did that with the first novel, Niki Undercover. I did the same with the first two drafts of Niki Unleashed.

As a pantser, I write my first draft without knowing what the plot is or what the characters plan. My second draft straightens the plot, filling holes and deleting tangents. With the third draft, I begin crafting the story.

One craft task I set for myself is to eliminate any POV not required to tell the story. As I worked on that aspect for Niki Unleashed, I determined that each time I eliminated a POV character, I improved the story—until only Niki remained. I had created another mystery/thriller.

Given the choice of reintroducing other POVs and converting it back to a pure thriller or telling the strongest story I can, I chose strength and Niki’s single POV. Marketing is important, but not if it means taking away from the story. The pattern was there for me to see, but it wasn’t until I was drafting this blog that I had an epiphany.

When the inciting incident of one of my stories is a specific mystery question (Ant Farm: who killed Samuel Presser? Bad Policy: who staged a murder victim in Seamus McCree’s basement? Granite Oath: What happened to Valeria’s mother? Niki Unleashed: who is killing executives of America’s largest polluters?) the strongest way I know to tell the story is by allowing the reader to join the protagonist in the search for answers without giving away what any of the other characters are thinking or how they act when they are not in the protagonist’s presence.

When the inciting incident is less specific, for example in Cabin Fever where Seamus finds a naked woman nearly frozen to death on his cabin’s screened porch, the strongest story I can write requires multiple POVs.

It turns out the most important lesson I’ve learned is that I can’t fight who I am as a writer. Despite my best intentions to make my marketing life simpler, I erect speed bumps—all for the best of reasons.

Now I’m curious. Fellow authors, do you control your POV choices, or do they choose you? Readers: if a novel calls itself a thriller, are you okay with it being a mystery/thriller as I described, or is that false advertising?

James M. Jackson writes justice-driven thrillers with “brains and bite,” including the award-winning Seamus McCree series. That series explores financial crimes, family relationships, and their deadly intersection across eight novels, two novellas, and several short stories. His Niki Undercover Thriller series stars Ashley Prescott, an undercover federal agent fighting domestic terrorism of all kinds. A life member of Sisters in Crime and past president of its Guppy Chapter, Jackson calls home the deep woods of Michigan's Upper Peninsula. When he’s not tormenting his characters, he’s likely birdwatching, hunting for moose sheds, or tracking wolves. Find news, extras, and upcoming events at https://jamesmjackson.com .