Sean

(SPOILER ALERT: If you haven't read Another Shot yet, you might not want to read this post.)

I think I always knew that Sean wouldn't stay with the crew.

How many times have you seen a movie or read a book where the main character gets snatched from his/her surroundings and thrown into a completely foreign situation? After a bunch of adventures, the character decides that this is where he/she belongs, no matter what his/her original plans might have been.

It always troubled me a little. I mean, sometimes the writer goes to great pains to let us know that this character is much better off this way, instead of in the dreary life that was abandoned, but sometimes it's not clear. And I always wondered what that character might have achieved in that original life.

So, being the stubborn person I am, I decided that my main character would not only have a good goal in life (teaching), he would also continue to pursue it, even after meeting Lamont's crew and acknowledging the importance of what they do. Sean didn't really fit in with them anyway, no matter what Hawkins might think, and it wouldn't have made a lot of sense for him to stay.

Some of my readers have expressed surprise at Sean's fading into the background. "Isn't the series about Sean?" they ask.

Well, no, not really. Sean is our introduction to the crew and he's a major character of the first novel, Outsider, that is true ... but he was always just one of the characters. Anybody who's willing to destroy the ship that her first novel was named after is going to be willing to jettison a major character. Call me brave or call me stupid ... it seems more true to the story that way.

Don't worry, though. You haven't seen the last of Sean. He's sure to pop up sometime in the future.