No, no, no!

They did it too me again, damn their eyes! The protagonist had just discovered an important wrinkle in the case. I touched the screen to discover “what comes next,” when instead of the next page in the current “who-dun-it”, up pops a screen “About the author.” With nary a by-your-leave, it informs me that s/he was born in a small town in northern Minnesota where s/he honed both his/her writing skills and love of nature by tracking black bears to their winter dens and journaling predictions as to when they might emerge. I don’t care, I don’t care, I don’t care. Get on with the damn story. 

I was just beginning to care about the protagonist. How can they treat me so shabbily? Odds are I will not hang around for the “thrilling conclusion” in their next novel, which the “About the author” page informs me will be published sometime in the next decade after the author completes his/her sabbatical in Tahiti. 

I really do try to understand the author’s point of view, which can reflect their struggle, sometimes their fight, with their own creation. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle tried valiantly to slip out from under the huge shadow of Sherlock Holmes by tossing him over a waterfall. The ploy ultimately failed and Doyle was obliged by public pressure - and financial inducements - to bring his iconic sleuth back from the dead to sleuth yet another day. Establishing, perhaps, our current obsession with season after season of less deserving narratives, or the recreation of previous successes out of something less than whole cloth.

Authors do depend upon our attention to pay the rent, so I guess I should be more tolerant of the occasional narrative fracture when the well runs a bit dry. I have written before of my own love of serialized fiction - particularly in the mystery genre. But if you are going to start down this monied path, dear author, please have the professionalism to leave us with some sense of individual completion when you leave us to weave the other various segments of your larger narrative. As Doyle and others have learned, our tolerance for narrative interruptus is frail and unforgiving.