For many reasons, A Good Way to Wind Up Dead was a difficult book to write, but most of those reasons had little to do with the book itself. This novel took longer to write than any of the prior five novels. That was due in significant part to the second half of 2023 and the entirety 2024 being the busiest periods of my law practice that I’ve ever experienced. Obviously, that’s good in many ways, but when it comes to having the time and mental energy to write a novel, there are certainly some tradeoffs.
As for the novel itself, it was born out of a short story I wrote a few years earlier, The Murder Tree, about a family of hitmen in Walker County, Alabama. Many of the people who read The Murder Tree requested more story in that world, and it’s one that I too wanted to revisit. I just didn’t know when that would be.
After I finished writing Watch Party, I was in search of my next novel. With no shortage of ideas in my idea spreadsheet (yes, I understand how nerdy that is), I wrote the beginnings of three different novels to see which one grabbed hold of me. Two of those were fantasy novels set in the same universe as my prior fantasy novels. The third was A Good Way to Wind Up Dead.
When I first contemplated A Good Way to Wind Up Dead, I knew that it would start minutes after the short story ended, with Sam having just killed her father. But this is not the story I expected to tell. In fact, A Good Way to Wind Up Dead ended up as the merging of the ideas for two different novels involving Sam. Chase wasn’t supposed to come along until the second book. But my muse and these characters had other things in mind.
I gave in fairly early and allowed the story ideas to meld into one novel in which Sam would be fighting for her life while developing a new friendship and figuring out what she wanted her life to be. Meanwhile, Chase tromped in, unwittingly kicking hornets’ nests and upending the accepted order of things.
One of the bigger things that plagued me throughout the writing of A Good Way to Wind Up Dead – which was similarly true in Watch Party – was that there were two things I didn’t know until well into the story. One, whether the missing woman was dead or alive. Two, who was ultimately behind causing her disappearance.
But these things have a way of sorting themselves out. My experience has been that I just keep writing and moving the story toward its resolution point, and as I get to know the characters better, they enable the story to unfold and work out all the kinks. In order to foster that process, I have a spreadsheet for everything along the way, which helps me prevent the kinks from becoming knots.
I hope you enjoy reading A Good Way to Wind Up Dead as much as I enjoyed writing it. Pre-order your copy you get it as soon as it releases on June 10, 2025.
Now that you have the story behind the book, you can also listen to the music behind the book as well. Check out the playlist I created on Spotify that accompanies the theme, events, or tone of the book.
