The way it ends...

A question I'm persistently asked - and have been so again this week - is do I know how the tvdetective series will end?

The answer is yes, and as it's the Saturday of a long weekend, and you've caught me at an upbeat moment, I can even give you a few little clues as to the outcomes. 

Firstly - and this is the most commonly posed question of all - yes, the Dan / Claire situation will be resolved.  But I'm not saying any more about that!  You'll just have to wait and see.

A little aside here (you were waiting for it, come on, you know me well enough by now), and it's one particularly for my female readers.  Yes, I know Dan is an idiot, yes, I know he treats poor Claire dreadfully, yes, I too wonder what she sees in him sometimes and why she hangs around, and yes, I'm sorry about all that!  He's just emotionally inept, and that's the way it is.  Give him some leeway, he might just come round and learn... maybe.

And no, don't start asking that other oft-heard question about whether Dan is in any way based upon myself!  That's a definite no comment.

Right, back to the point.  I'm guessing, at the moment, there will probably be around ten or twelve books in the series, which puts us roughly at the half-way point (that's based on the sizeable assumption / hope that people want to keep reading them, and some poor publisher will be willing to inflict them upon the world).

I've got plots in mind for at least the next three books, depending on how they pan out when I start planning them properly.  All the familiar characters should feature until the end - I don't have much in the way of plans to kill off one of the "stars", though it can be tempting sometimes!

There'll also be the return of a couple of other characters you've met along the way, particularly one from The Balance of Guilt, and for an important reason. Why?  Well, I do intend to let you know why Dan is such a coward, or at least appears to be...

And that's quite enough of that for now, before I write too much!  See how you make me give things away?!

Finally for this post, the big question of how is it all going to end?  I'm not sure how much I can say about that, except to disagree with - TS Eliot, was it? - about the way the world ends.  I hope to manage at least a passable bang, rather than a whimper.

And lastly finally (honestly!)... just a couple of sentences from the heart.  When the series is finally done, I sure am going to miss it, to put it mildly.  It's been such fun, an absolute joy, and the passage to another world for me, one that I've come to love.