AJ Alanson Author

I came across the phrase the other day, “Building Character,” as in whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, but the first time through, I read it wrong because I have a “building” character. And for anyone who knows the admiral’s mansion in my books, that building builds character, too.

A few surprises cropped up after I started The Admiral Inn 12-book series. I’d like to say I planned out the whole thing – all one million words – but where’s the fun in that? Not that I’m a pantser. I’m totally a plotter – definitely – but my fun, after the outline is finished, is the little surprises that crop up in each chapter: different character reactions than I had expected, research rabbit holes I just had to investigate, implications I hadn’t anticipated, or fan responses I didn’t see coming.

For instance, after Book 1, I found my readers were trying to guess who June Faust might accept as a suitor after decades alone (if anyone), even lobbying for their choice. That’s pure author joy! By the end of Book 2, I discovered the building itself – a local admiral’s mansion – had always been a character of its own making. Make no mistake, The Admiral series isn’t paranormal or fantasy but buildings and settings can come alive as we tend to anthropomorphize the world around us. As in the mansion seems to be out to get June.

These two characters connected a decade before the series begins – even before June arrived in Moorewicks Bay, Maine, from D.C. She’d only seen pictures of the property when she placed a bid on a government auction site while she packed up her office to switch careers. Something just spoke to her – more like a siren’s song. And for the next ten years as she tried to restore the old bones into a welcoming inn, the house tried – and is still trying – to dash her efforts against the rocks.

Truth is, the mansion spoke to me, too, and soon became an active participant in the mysteries and hijinks around the estate – and history of Moorewicks Bay. Over these fictional twelve months = twelve books, the inn’s thick layers of silent, ugly past are peeled back one by sticky, slimy one – each with the same stench of a rotten onion.

In many ways, this process of revelation is mirrored in my persistent attacks on June’s armor, on her barricades against intimacy and trust, since losing her husband in her twenties. I wish I thought of that – this layered parallel between the mansion and June – but I obviously felt it. And now, as I’m writing the last chapters of the series, I find myself wondering: of the three of us, who exactly remodeled whom?

With this series ending (and moving into the audiobooks phase), I feel I can see patterns and connections I missed while writing. I see the whole story more clearly, and will be sharing more of those twists and turns going forward. For several years, readers have asked questions about craft and the experiences I draw from, but I never felt quite ready to speak for the series before I could see it as a whole. Until now.

Book #10, A Wolf in the Cove, is out now and available on Amazon alongside the rest of the series. Buy a Wolf! Or get started with A Devil in the Donations. Pick up a Devil!