Note de l’auteur: Author’s Note Summary

[Spoiler Warning: This is the author’s afterword. It contains behind‑the‑scenes revelations and may discuss plot points that are more impactful if you have finished the novel.]

Summary

King opens by acknowledging a glaring discontinuity: while Holly is steeped in the COVID-19 pandemic, his earlier novella “If It Bleeds” – set in December 2020, a horrific month for the disease – makes no mention of it. He explains that when he wrote the novella in 2019, COVID was not yet a concern, and although he hates when real events disrupt his fiction, rewriting the entire story is not an option; a card laid is a card played.

He addresses potential backlash from vaccine opponents, noting that Holly’s strong pro‑vaccine stance and exaggerated precautions (cigarettes excepted) arise naturally from her character and her mother’s COVID death. King asserts that his fiction is more credible when it coexists with real events, people, and brand names. He clarifies that if he had chosen an anti‑vax protagonist, he would have presented that viewpoint objectively.

Shifting to the novel’s antagonist, King observes that Rodney Harris is the opposite of his own beliefs. Every historical fact Harris cites is accurate, but his conclusions – such as eating human liver to cure Alzheimer’s – are utterly deranged. King grants that Harris is mad and wryly adds that the remark is insulting to the mad.

A long tribute follows to researcher Robin Furth, who schooled King on cannibalism and, crucially, built a complete Holly Gibney timeline from the Mr Mercedes trilogy. This forced King to do heavy rewriting but saved him from many blunders; he confesses only one error remains, concerning Uncle Henry’s children. He calls Furth his Goddess of Research and credits her for everything good.

For Latin assistance, King thanks Tim Ingram and Peter Jones of Classics for All. He mourns the death of his agent Charles Verrill in early 2022, then praises Liz Darhansoff, Michele Mortimer, and Eric Amling for stepping in with grace. Additional thanks go to foreign‑rights agent Chris Lotts, film/TV agent Rand Holston, and editor Nan Graham, whose suggested cuts and changes kept the story on track. He also thanks his corgi Molly – known as the Devil Thing – for cheering him up, and his wife Tabitha King, who guided him through the most difficult scene: Jerome’s final conversation with Vera Steinman.

King concludes by revealing the novel’s origin. One clear image – Holly attending her mother’s Zoom funeral – demanded a story. A newspaper article with a headline like “Everyone thought they were an adorable old couple until bodies started appearing in their garden” gave him the lens of elderly murderers, and he built the book around it. He hopes readers enjoyed the journey into a new dark place.

Key Events

King acknowledges the COVID‑19 absence in “If It Bleeds” and declines to rewrite it.
He defends Holly’s pro‑vaccine posture as character‑driven, not a personal soapbox.
He highlights the contrast between Rodney Harris’s accurate historical facts and his delusional cannibalistic cure.
He reveals the extensive research done by Robin Furth: cannibalism primer and a complete Holly Gibney chronology.
He admits a remaining continuity error about Uncle Henry’s kids.
He thanks numerous collaborators – editors, agents, experts – and shares personal notes on Tabitha King’s help with the Jerome‑Vera scene.
He discloses the spark of the story: a Zoom funeral image and a newspaper article about seemingly sweet elderly killers.

Character Development

Though no fictional character evolves here, King deepens our understanding of Holly Gibney off‑stage. He confirms that her hypochondria and vaccine obsession are organic outgrowths of her backstory – her mother’s death from COVID – not authorial intrusion. The note also reveals King’s own method: he would have given equal weight to an anti‑vax viewpoint had the protagonist required it, underscoring his commitment to objective character voices. Rodney Harris is dissected as a man whose factual knowledge only serves his madness. Finally, Tabitha King is touched upon as an active creative partner, and Robin Furth emerges almost as a guardian of the Holly continuity.

Themes, Symbols, or Motifs Evidenced Here

Reality Colliding with Fiction: King wrestles with the intrusion of real‑world events (the pandemic) into his fictional timeline. His solution is to acknowledge the discontinuity rather than erase it, a testament to authenticity.
The Writer’s Responsibility: He distinguishes between presenting a character’s viewpoint and endorsing it, arguing that fiction gains power when it reflects genuine human variety.
Research as Foundation: Furth’s painstaking timeline work and cannibalism research mirror the novel’s emphasis on factual detail – even Rodney Harris’s madness is built on real history.
The Accidental Germ of a Story: King shares two seeds – a solitary image (Zoom funeral) and a sensational headline – demonstrating how a novel coalesces from disparate fragments.
Mortality and Legacy: The mention of Charles Verrill’s death and the gratitude toward a long‑term team give the note an elegiac undertone, linking the novel’s theme of loss to the author’s real life.

Why This Chapter Matters

“Note de l’auteur” is more than a list of thank‑yous. It addresses head‑on the continuity puzzle that attentive readers will notice, defusing potential criticism with candor. It articulates King’s philosophy of fiction – that credibility arises from a braiding of fact and invention, not from sanitised unreality. The note also demystifies the creative process, showing how research, collaboration, and even a headline can shape a narrative. By closing with the story’s origin, King invites readers to see the entire novel as an answer to the question: what if a bland‑seeming elderly couple were hiding something monstrous? In a book that deals heavily with hidden evil, this behind‑the‑scenes glimpse reinforces the theme and humanises the writer.

Study Questions and Answers

Why does King refuse to revise “If It Bleeds” to include COVID, and what does this tell us about his approach to continuity?
King sees rewriting the novella as a major undertaking that would alter the entire story. He invokes the card‑game adage “a card laid is a card played,” signalling that he values the integrity of a published work as it was conceived, even when external events later make it anachronistic. This means he tolerates small ruptures in his fictional universe rather than retroactively smoothing them.
How does King justify Holly’s outsized COVID precautions, and why does he emphasise that he would present an anti‑vax character objectively?
He bases her precautions on character biography – her hypochondria and her mother’s pandemic death – making the behaviour psychologically credible. By adding that he would give an anti‑vax protagonist a fair hearing, he draws a line between the author’s personal beliefs and his craft: credible fiction requires that every character’s worldview be rendered from the inside, not caricatured.
What do the dual sources of inspiration – the Zoom funeral image and the true‑crime‑style headline – reveal about King’s creative method?
The image of Holly at a virtual funeral was a powerful, static scene King wanted to reach; the headline supplied the narrative engine to get there. This shows that King often begins with a single arresting mental picture (a “what if”) and waits for a plot catalyst to arrive from real life. The combination of emotion (grief) and shock (elderly cannibals) mirrors the novel’s tonal blend of domestic sorrow and visceral horror.

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