SPOILERS HERE — if you haven’t read DIM DISTANT STARS (and intend to), you might not want to read this post!
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A confession: when I began writing Dim Distant Stars, I had no idea which of his many female friends Jack McFee might end up with. Nor did I intend him to have made any decisions by the end. Vili — Princess Vilma Lempsen — remained the strongest contender. I did know Policewoman Veronika ‘Niki’ O’Toole would be taken out of the running.
The first thought there was that she would fall for Jack’s college friend, Father John Barbosa, and join him as a colonist. That felt clunky by the time I reached that point in the story. It would have added irrelevant narrative. So I simply said she had already emigrated, creating a sort of foreshadowing, and decided Anna Gallen would be the one to marry John and go off to a ‘new world.’ This way of removing her from contention seemed good until I was almost to the end of the book.
When a radical shift of direction presented itself — and I went with it. John is killed*, Jack proposes to Anna, she accepts. All tied up, no more doubt and indecision from our hero. About time! I’d always truly wanted the two to end up together but I just couldn’t see a clear route to it. This presented the perfect one.
He would never have been quite right for Vili anyway, would he? Jack would have been restless. Anna is the one woman with whom he can truly share his life.
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*A shocker for many readers, I’m sure. It even shocked me that I could treat such a sympathetic character so badly.
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