I didn’t get the attitude of the second group. As one who read his series more than once, I knew firsthand that none of his books ended in a cliffhanger and if the next book was never written, those readers weren’t out anything.
Because of angry “mob-like” mentality, it made sense for him to go into hiding to escape those demands and that pressure. My guess was, his publisher was riding Chase’s ass, too, since he made them a nice chunk of change. And like his readers, they probably felt as though they were being screwed over.
In truth, Chase owed them nothing. Not his publisher, not his big-time agent, not even his readers. He owed it to himself to take a break if and when he needed it. Even if that break was two years and counting.
While I was just as anxious to read the next book in the series as everyone else, including Dolly, I wouldn’t make death threats or threaten a writer with any kind of violence like some of the comments I unfortunately read on these forums. Some were downright scary. I couldn’t imagine the kind of emails his agent or publisher received. Some of them had to be even worse.
This was a case of fiction being mistaken for real life. People forgot that characters in a novel were just that. Fiction. Nothing more, nothing less.
Imaginary people born and continuing to live in an author’s mind.
Though, it could be said that the passion his readers had toward his work was a testament to how well Chase wrote. How much his words sucked a reader into a story. They felt as if they were solving a serial murder case alongside the handsome, intelligent Detective Nick Foster.
Honestly, if I had the power, I would snap my fingers and a real Nick Foster would walk through the front door and sweep me off my feet. Or sweep me off to bed.
But as much as I could fantasize about that, I knew where the line was drawn between fact and fiction.
And one fact I now knew was that Chase was a widower. That led me to start searching online for obituaries. However, I couldn’t be positive that Chase Jones wasn’t a fake name. And if it was, I was wasting time I could be using to finish my next Dexter Peabody book before my deadline.
C.J. Anson wasn’t the only author with clamoring fans. Maybe I didn’t have quite the number he had, but my readers, once hooked on my bumbling private investigator series, were pretty loyal.
I was damn lucky to have them, too. Without my readers encouraging me to write the next book, I wouldn’t be able to keep the bookstore open, or even pay my bills.
With a drawn-out sigh, I scrolled through the tenth page of results after googling the terms: Chase, Jones, obituary and New York. One of the facts mentioned on C.J. Anson’s “About the Author” page on his very professionally done website was he lived in New York. Unfortunately, the Empire State was big.
I understood the need to keep his most personal details private for his safety. Most authors did. And after reading some of the threats of violence against him just for taking so long to release the next book, I’m glad he had.
My eyes skimmed the search results as I continued to scroll, waiting for something to jump out at me. Why did Jones have to be such a common last name?
By the fourteenth page of search results, I was about to give up for the day when something caught my eye.
Survived by his devoted husband Chase A. Jones.
In my head I could hear the squeal of tires as I slammed on the brakes, threw it in reverse to scroll back up, clicked on the link to open the complete obituary, leaned closer toward the monitor, and reread that single line.
Survived by his devoted husband Chase A. Jones.
Chase Jones had been married to another man. His wife wasn’t dead. His husband was.
My heart did a little thumpity-thump in my chest.
Chase was gay.
Holy shit.
The obituary was for a Thomas P. Jones. Skimming it, I couldn’t find a cause of death, only that he died suddenly. I assumed that the death was unexpected, too, since there wasn’t any mention of an illness.
I also noted that it listed Chase’s parents as Thomas’s survivors but not Thomas’s own parents. That was odd.
In lieu of flowers, the obit asked that donations be made in Thomas’s memory to The Trevor Project.
The Trevor Project.
I donated to that non-profit once a year when I had a little spare cash, since the organization focused on suicide prevention and crisis intervention for LGBTQ+ youth. However, that didn’t mean that Thomas died by suicide, it could just be a non-profit Chase or his husband liked to support. For good reason.