When is a COVID story not a COVID story?

How does someone write in a year like this?

A year that provides a steady supply of “2020” jokes, a lot of them along the lines of the “apocalypse of the month office pool.” A year that keeps me reminding myself it’s really just one event—that one historian called the biggest world-changer since World War II—triggering and interacting with other forces that were in the works before the outbreak.

What does a storyteller do in a time like this?

Plenty of authors are simply scaling up the challenge they were already meeting. They’ll target what it means to be separated from family, or watch hope waver and shift into new forms. They’ll teach about how people struggle and learn what they need to keep each other safe.

And other writers try to simply give hope, with stories that stay clear of viruses and give us a different world. Of course that’s easier for fantasy and science fiction writers that really do write in a different world or time, but tracking a mind-twisting assassin can be a thrill in any setting. Any setting that isn’t the life we’re in now.

I’ve always been in the second camp. Paul and Lorraine, Mark and Angie and Henry and the rest, are there to share the pure excitement I’ve found in the stories I love. If I can make a harried reader or two stop to smile, and sweat, then I’ve given them the best gift I have.

And yet, viruses are hard things to keep out.

Shadow Sight is the completion of Shadowed and Tracks In Shadow, books that were designed before the world had heard of COVID-19. Watching Paul Schuman search through one city for answers, and another town for some of the people behind them, are very much the appeal of a simpler world. Shadow Sight is the next step after that, and there’s no coronavirus in this book either.

Except there’s a prison. And house arrest, and long hours for Paul to reflect on the choices he’s made and the people he’s helped and hurt, and whether he can endure all the watching and strategizing it may take to get control of his life again.

—It’s also got escapes, chases, alliances and betrayals, and Paul showing just how many ways there are to get control of a secret. Even his own.

Hmm. So after my months behind closed doors digging through my imagination to create a worthy escape, I have… a story with closed doors. And family, and hard questions about what’s ahead for him.

Will parts of Shadow Sight seem close to home? They might. I know each reader is going to take it differently, and the story is always Paul’s own.

Still, the next thing I write… I may try some stronger armor.

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