When I started writing the books, I knew that the “present” of the story took place four years after the notorious Billy Dent had been arrested, tried, and convicted. Furthermore, I knew that Billy’s “career” stretched back twenty years, longer than his son had been alive. This meant that I had a lot of backstory in my head and in my notes as I wrote. Some of it leaked out in dribs and drabs over the course of the trilogy. Now, one thing authors have to drum into their heads early on is this: Backstory is not story! We have a tendency to fall in love with our backstories, which oftentimes leads to terminally dull prologues or extended, boring flashback sequences. It’s easy to forget that the audience cares about the story, not the backstory. But when it came to I Hunt Killers, there were bits and pieces of the backstory that I thought would be of interest to readers…as long as they didn’t interfere with the action in the story itself. How did Jazz get his nickname? How did Jazz and Connie fall in love, given the circumstances?
