In all my years as a writer, I’ve never had to completely start over with a book or story. Cut the fat? Of course!

Clean, edit, revise? Always.

Rewrite? Perhaps a scene or two but never an entire book or at least the entire opening of a book.

Until Tempered Truth.

I struggled with the concept of this story for years.

Why? You ask.

Maybe because I wasn’t ready to end this series. Perhaps the characters wanted their final say, either way this book proved to be a bit difficult to start.

You see, throughout the series, the main character in books one and two (Craig Harris and Scott Hensley) referred to themselves as best friends even though they looked alike enough to be brothers. In book 4, Tempered Joy, I decided to answer the question of whether or not they were actually related. Craig’s son had married Scott’s adopted daughter the year before so, in a scene around Christmas, Scott toasts his and Craig’s granddaughter …..

Scott laughed and took a sip then raised his glass again. “I was thinking more along the lines of…to you, my brother, and to our beautiful granddaughter.”

That’s it, a very simple answer to a life-long question and I thought this is it. Yay! The series is complete!

Not so fast.

When I got the rights back and decided to self-publish the entire series and include the first chapter of the subsequent book in each volume, I had asked, and been asked by readers…. What really happened that these two men were raised as neighbors and not brothers?

I always have a Scripture reference in my books and the one that kept haunting me was John 8:32: “And ye shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free.”

I sat down and wrote a prologue for Tempered Truth. Set one week after the terrorists’ attack on America (9/11) Scott is wrestling with the issue that had bothered him his entire life… Who Was He? Many times, the question arose and every time, he ignored it and the letter that he received upon his mother’s death, somehow knowing it contained the truth of his parentage.

Being a ‘pantster’ and not really knowing the details myself, I thought I’d go back in time…begin the book with the prologue but jump back to 1942 and to Scott and Craig’s parents but what came out about their father was so dark, so ugly I just couldn’t see how to cut through the mess and get to the message. So, I put the prologue in Tempered Joy and set the book aside, promising to finish it sometime in the “near future.” Which is what I told my readers.

That ‘near future’ turned out to be nearly nine years!

During that time, I wrestled with the book until I decided a completely different approach had to take place. I kept the prologue and threw the rest out. But, this time, I had another dilemma.

Would Scott die and Craig, (widowed in Tempered Joy), end up in a relationship with his brother’s widow?

That didn’t sit well either! Therefore, the story sat a while longer and I tossed around ideas until, one day, everything clicked.

So, how do you know when a story is not working?