Most writers think a good chapter ending is about surprise.

A gunshot. A scream. A door kicked open. Someone whispering a name they shouldn’t know.

Those things work—sometimes. But they’re unreliable, and worse, they train the writer to chase escalation instead of control. The result is a book that shouts when it should tighten its voice.

The endings that actually make readers turn the page rarely shout... They land. Twice.

This is what I call the one-two punch.

The first punch creates realization.
The second removes the reader’s footing.

It isn’t spectacle. It’s leverage.

The first punch gives the reader new information—something that reorders the scene they just read. A truth surfaces. A motive clarifies. A hidden arrangement is revealed. The reader sits back, recalibrating. Ah. So that’s what’s really going on.

When Thomas Tilson was born in 1951, he had no nose, lips, or jawbone—an anomaly so severe that survival seemed unlikely. Doctors advised his parents to let him die. Instead, his life became a 74-year testament to surgical innovation, stubborn hope, and faith that would let go.

On this week’s In The Writer’s Chair, I pulled up a seat with Thomas to discuss his memoir, Facing Myself: A Life’s Journey from Tragedy to Finding God’s Love. What unfolded was a meditation on identity—what it means to face yourself when the world has already decided who you are.

A Child of Experimental Medicine

Thomas became a patient of one of the foremost reconstructive surgeons at Northwestern. The agreement was straightforward: the surgeries would be free because his case would be documented for medical journals. Sixty-five reconstructive procedures followed. Each carried risk. Each advanced a field still defining itself.

His progress helped shape modern craniofacial reconstruction. Today, his case stands as evidence that severe deformity does not determine a person’s capacity for a full, expressive life.

But surgical innovation does not soften a difficult childhood.

Thomas recalled the snickering classrooms of the 1950s, years of speech therapy, and rebellion that left him homeless at sixteen. His resilience was not born in the operating room. It was forged in cafeterias and on sidewalks, in daily decisions to keep going.

If you sat in on the call that night, you wouldn’t have thought it was anything special. A few people in different states, one in Michigan, one in New Jersey, two in Florida. Someone’s voice was scratchy from a cold. Another was waiting for a shipment of books that seemed to be traveling by mule. Someone else had just illustrated her own children’s book because she didn’t want to pay an artist.

And yet, this is what the writing life actually looks like.

A handful of people logging in after dinner, each carrying a book idea that has taken years—sometimes decades—to reach the surface.

One woman was launching a second edition of a book about growing up in East Germany and learning to build a life beyond invisible walls.
Another had written a historical novel based on her grandmother’s journey to America in 1921.
A man was finishing a biography of Greta Garbo—his great aunt—after years of research.

It wasn’t a networking event.
It wasn’t a pitch session.
No one was trying to impress anyone.

They were simply introducing themselves. Three minutes at a time.

We’ve all seen it.

A great book—beautiful writing, carefully edited, wonderfully presented. ARC readers love it. The reviews—when they come—all give 5 stars. And yet the book idles on Amazon like a racecar that never takes off. It does not find its audience. It does not travel.

This vacuum looks like a verdict.

The author thinks the writing’s not good enough. Or worse, maybe they’re not good enough. They try harder. Ramp up social media. Do a blog tour. Lower prices. Add urgency—get this deal before it disappears.

Professional authors pause.

They understand something that takes professional writers years to learn: a good book is not the same as a working book.

Every writer knows the moment. You’re re-reading a scene that matters, and something tightens in your chest.

Is this believable?
Is this too much?
Have I crossed a line I can’t uncross?

Writers often call this the “cringe factor,” but that word is misleading.

Cringe is not the enemy. Disbelief is.

The distinction matters.

Discomfort is a valid—and often necessary—reader response. It means the story is working. Disbelief, on the other hand, breaks the spell. The reader stops trusting the story and starts judging the writer.

Manuscripts stumble when the timing is wrong.

Most writers believe their audience is something to worry about after the book is finished.

That’s when the cover is ready. That’s when they write the back-cover copy and check the genre boxes. Marketing people determine the audience because that’s a business decision.

That’s also why so many books flounder.

Audience is not a marketing decision. It’s a storytelling decision. When it’s unclear, the book has no place to anchor.

You can feel it when beta readers disagree wildly. When one person calls the book gripping and another calls it disturbing. When an editor says the writing is strong, but they can’t articulate who the reader is. The story works on the page but not in the world.

What’s usually missing isn’t talent or effort. It’s alignment.

Writers know where they belong.

Bookstores. Libraries. Literary festivals. Conferences with lanyards and coffee urns and panel discussions that run ten minutes over. These are the sanctioned spaces. They are safe. They are familiar. They are, in many cases, crowded with other authors hoping to be noticed by the same small group of readers.

What we are not taught—and might feel faintly rebellious—is that books sell very well where no one expects them.

A gun show. A car show. A county fair. An antique market. These are not environments most authors would circle on a calendar with anticipation. They sound weird or at least a bit odd. What would people who came to buy spark plugs or quilts or hunting gear want with a novel?

I didn’t expect to sell books at a gun show.

That sentence alone would probably get me politely escorted out of most publishing conferences, but it happens to be true. I set up my author table between vendors selling knife sharpeners and boxes of ammunition, fully prepared for an afternoon of awkward smiles and polite disinterest. What I got instead was conversation—real conversation—with people I would never have met inside a bookstore.

By the end of the day, I sold ten books. I also met a former shop owner who bought a novel because she loves to read, a man who quietly admitted he wanted to write a novel, and a local business owner whose card I slipped into my pocket because, as it turns out, I need a handyman. I made my table fee back and then some. But that wasn’t the part that stayed with me…