Something wicked is going on in the village of Ascension. A mother wasting away from cancer is suddenly up and about. A boy trampled by a milk cart walks away from the accident. A hanged man can still speak, broken neck and all.
The dead are not dying.
When Rabbit and Sadie Grace accompany their friend Rose to Ascension to help take care of her ailing cousin, they immediately notice that their new house, Bethany Hall, is occupied by dozens of ghosts. And something is waiting for them in the attic.
The villagers of Ascension are unwelcoming and wary of their weird visitors. As the three women attempt to find out what’s happening in the town, they must be careful not to be found out. But a much larger—and more dangerous—force is galloping straight for them…
It’s not that I’m forgetting how to write. The books are actually getting harder.
I’ve written eight novels (eleven, if you count my drawer/trunk books), and each one has been harder to write than the one before it. Every time I start writing a book or story, it’s like I’m starting a jigsaw puzzle, and each puzzle has more pieces.
It’s my fault. I make it harder for myself. I lay down some new gauntlet every time to make it interesting. This time I challenged myself to try two types of story structure in one book, and I dared myself to switch back and forth between third- and first-person perspectives. I think it turned out pretty well. I’m happy with the end result. But for a while as I was working on this particular thousand-piece puzzle, I wished I had chosen one of those board puzzles for toddlers.
Of course, the book I’m working on now is even more of a challenge.
I am not just one thing.
Since you read authors’ newsletters (at least one author’s newsletter), you probably already know the difference between a “plotter” and a “pantser,” but just in case… Plotters are writers who outline their books first, then go back and flesh their stories out once the broad strokes are in place, while pantsers fly by the seat of our pants (get it?), diving into a story, often with no idea where it’s going or how it will end.
I’ve always been a pantser. I don’t usually know how I’m gonna wrap up a story until I’m about two-thirds of the way through. I genuinely think my subconscious figures things out while I’m merrily typing away, and springs the ending on me when it decides I’m ready. It’s a fun way to work, and I hope that if I can be surprised by my own story, maybe you’ll be surprised by it, too.
But I got two-thirds of the way through Rose of Jericho and realized I still didn’t know how to end it. I kept writing and writing, knowing full well that I was stalling for time, filling up pages that wouldn’t survive the next draft, trying to figure out what my subconscious had in mind (so to speak).
So I did a thing I’ve never done before: I went back through and summarized each scene with a sentence or two, and printed them out, and cut the pages into strips, one strip per scene. I laid them out on our bedroom table (the only table that wasn’t piled with books, or magazines, or mail, or our son’s crap) and moved them around, removing some and writing new scenes on blank strips of paper. I figured out my structure was all wrong just by looking at the thing physically.
Plotting backwards! Pantsing forward!
My books aren’t one thing either.
Sales & Marketing would like it if my books were one thing at a time. Westerns or Horror or Fantasy. They want to be able to sell my books. And I want them to do that. I want people to read my books! That’s the whole point! I could shout my stories into the void at the edge of town if I wasn’t looking for a conversation with my readers. (The void screams at me to join it.)
It’s easier to sell a book if you can sum it up neatly, but Rose of Jericho is a Weird West adventure, a Haunted House Horror story, and a Romantic Fantasy, all in one.
This book made me actually think about what I write and who I write it for. I wrote Historical Thrillers for a long while, then wrote a contemporary thriller, then I jumped to Horror/Western/Fantasy, but my thrillers all contained elements of horror and/or fantasy, and I never gave it any thought at all. I didn’t mean to mash things up so thoroughly, but I’ve always done that, and I’ve decided to make my peace with it. This is what I like to write. I hope this is what you like to read.
Sales & Marketing will always be frustrated with me. I don’t think there’s anything I can do about that. One genre isn’t enough. The story wants to be what the story wants to be.
Go easy on the spices.
I actually learned this with my second book then forgot it and had to learn it again. The first draft of my sophomore novel, The Black Country was twice as long as the final published version. I whittled away at it, and I whittled, and I whittled. Whole characters and chase scenes and subplots disappeared. I was miserable about it, and I vowed to be more focused in the future.
That lasted five whole books before I did it again. The final version of Rose of Jericho is about half as long as the first draft. I cut out a major character, and assigned his scenes to other characters, cut out unnecessary chapters and superfluous themes (see above for my genre problem). I didn’t need any of that stuff, and the book’s better without it, but it sure seemed right at the time.
Lesson learned. Again. I’m sure I’ll unlearn it in another book or two.
Rose of Jericho is amazing.
I mean the plant this book is named after (though I do hope you like the book).
There are witches in this novel, and each of them has a slightly different skillset, but they all derive their power from the earth. From herbs and wind and sun and seasons. As with my previous book, Red Rabbit, I spent a lot of time researching plants and a lot of them are absolutely incredible organisms. Case in point, Selaginella lepidophylla (also known as rose of Jericho, or the resurrection plant) can go years without water. Years! It can completely dry out, be damaged and burnt, then spring back to life minutes after being exposed to water again.
Sure sounds like magic to me.
Alex Grecian is the New York Times bestselling author of The Yard and its sequels, as well as Red Rabbit, Rose of Jericho, and the contemporary thriller The Saint of Wolves and Butchers. He has also written several award-winning graphic novels, including Proof, which is currently being developed for Fox. He lives in the American Midwest with his wife and son, their stinky dog, and a tarantula named Rosie.
Alex Grecian: Website | Bluesky
Rose of Jericho: Bookshop.org | Kobo | Libro.fm | B&N
