Writing a familiar finale

The chapter, the third in the biblical book of Ecclesiastes, has moved writers and thinkers for centuries. Even movie makers and recording artists have drawn inspiration from its words.

Actor Kevin Bacon quoted the passage in the 1984 film Footloose. Folk singer Pete Seeger set it to music. The Byrds, an American rock group, adapted and recorded it, producing "Turn! Turn! Turn!" Their soulful interpretation, a Billboard Number 1 hit in the fall of 1965, became an enduring anthem of the 1960s.

In every version of the poem, the message is the same: "To everything there is a season." There is a season to laugh and weep, to be born and die, to love and hate, to dance and mourn. In literature, as in life, there is a time and a place for everything.

In writing Crown City, the last book in the Time Box series, I took the passage to heart and then some. I gave the Lanes, my family of time travelers, a season and a reason to fulfill their potential. I gave them a comprehensive taste of the human experience.

Readers will find the evidence in spades. There are births and deaths in Crown City – as well as weddings, funerals, dances, feasts, farewells, reunions, and coming-of-age moments. There is also laughter, tears, love, hate, healing, and sacrifice. There are the very things that have made the Lane saga such a joy to write.

I included these things on purpose, of course. Since writing The Mine, my first novel, ten years ago, I have asked myself the same questions. Why tell one story when you can tell ten? Why not give readers a seven-course meal? Why not present life as it is?

Sometimes covering all the bases in a single work is difficult. Sometimes it is easy. In Crown City, it was easy. I merely had to follow several individual stories, the stories of the Lane family, to their logical conclusions. I had to finish what I started.

As in The Mirror, Hannah's Moon, and Camp Lake, my other series finales, readers will find the answers to many lingering questions. Longtime readers will also find much that is familiar.

In writing my twentieth novel, I paid serious homage to the first nineteen. I borrowed at least one theme, name, place, or circumstance from every other book and gave it a fresh spin.

I did so because I could and because I thought the time was right. For me, the season for writing a novel that encompassed the spectrum of life had come. Crown City is currently in the final editing phase. It is now set for an early December release.