I have a dilemma.
In the next Tammy Pierre book, The Clubhouse Slaughters [COMING IN FEBRUARY 2026], I’ve written a short chapter that we’ve taken to calling “the coffee shop scene.” My main purpose was to show the vulnerability of Tammy’s father, Matthew, to the threats Tammy is receiving.
While Matthew enjoying his meal, the Kerkut brothers (two of the bad guys) show up and fix their attention on Matthew. For added realism and to emphasize the tension, I had “a muscled young man” named Ben Eastman sit at Matthew’s table and engage in small talk. Ben also notices and comments on the looks Matthew is getting from the Kerkuts.
You can read the rest of the scene in these four pages, to learn more about Ben and how the interactions play out:
My dilemma comes from one of my editors’ feedback on the manuscript asking, what happens to Ben after that scene? He doesn’t appear again in this book. The editor kept expecting Ben to turn up again, wondering if he would become an important character.
So far, my answer has been no. He played the role I saw for him in this book. But what about down the road? Several characters have appeared in multiple Tammy novels. Now I’m wondering, should I write a back story for him and bring him into Tammy’s world?
I haven’t decided, so you’ll have to wait for A Corridor of Mirrors, which I’m working on now!
