What happened after I finished The Echo Thief
About
When I finished The Echo Thief, I thought I might finally get some sleep.
I'd been carrying that story around for twenty years. Twenty years of writing, rewriting, changing things, putting it away, then dragging it back out because some part of it still wasn't right.
Paula was there for a lot of it.
She listened to me talk about characters like they were actual people. She put up with my ideas, my revisions, and probably more conversations about a fictional city than any woman should reasonably have to endure.
And she believed in me.
I wish she'd gotten to see what we were building.
Paula died on October 28, 2025. She was thirty-five years old. Two blood clots took her from me.
I'd already lost my brother Billy years earlier. I thought I understood grief. I knew what it was like to miss somebody, to wish you could pick up the phone and hear their voice again.
But losing Paula was different.
She wasn't just somebody I loved. She was the person I spent every day with. My best friend. The one I woke up beside, argued with, laughed with, made plans with. The person who knew what kind of mood I was in before I'd even opened my mouth.
And suddenly she wasn't there.
The strange thing about losing somebody is how ordinary the last day can seem while you're living it.
That morning, Paula wanted to tell me about an apothecary.
We were living in my Escalade at the time, trying to get ourselves into an apartment. Things had been hard, but we were working on it. We had plans. We were getting close.
Paula woke up before me, which wasn't unusual. I'm terrible in the morning. I need a little time before I'm fit for human conversation.
Paula didn't believe in that.
She'd found something on her phone about the word apothecary, and she was fascinated. She started explaining how it was an old-fashioned pharmacy, where people used to prepare medicines.
And she kept talking.
I was barely awake, listening to this beautiful woman tell me about something she'd just discovered.
That was Paula. Smart as hell. Curious about everything. She could find something interesting in just about anything, and once she did, you were going to hear about it whether you were ready or not.
I'd give anything to hear her explain that word again.
We had a dog named Pluto. I got him for her for Christmas. He's part Great Pyrenees and part Australian Shepherd, and he's a big, furry pain in the ass.
She absolutely adored him.
She taught him tricks, spoiled him, talked to him like he understood every word. When I went to work, Paula and Pluto would come along and wait together. Those two were a team.
And Paula loved messing with me.
Sometimes I'd think she'd fallen asleep in the back of the Escalade. Her eyes would be closed, everything quiet, and I'd finally start relaxing.
Then, out of nowhere—
"AH!"
I'd practically jump out of my skin.
She'd been lying there awake the whole time, waiting for exactly the right moment.
And she'd laugh.
God, she loved getting me with that one.
We were together for five years. Not every day was easy. We had our problems, like everybody does, and sometimes life seemed determined to throw another one at us before we'd finished dealing with the last.
But we had each other.
There was this little thing Paula did every night when she was ready to go to sleep.
She'd tap my left arm.
That was it. Just a tap.
I'd lift my arm, she'd move in against my chest, and I'd wrap it around her.
We didn't have to say anything. We'd done it so many times that it was just what we did.
The last few nights were cold, so we'd get under the covers with Pluto lying on top of us, taking up far more room than any dog has a right to.
I didn't know how much those little things mattered until they stopped happening.
Pluto is sitting beside me while I write this.
And sometimes, when I'm lying down, I still catch myself waiting for that tap on my arm.
When I started writing 3:47: Ecstasy, I thought I was telling a story about a woman who discovers she might not be the person she believes she is.
And I am.
But somewhere along the way, it became about something else, too.
What makes us who we are? How much of ourselves do we carry in the people we love? And what happens to all those little pieces when somebody is gone?
I think about Billy all the time.
I think about Paula every day.
There are still moments when something happens and my first instinct is to tell one of them.
A funny thing Pluto did. Something ridiculous somebody said. A sentence in the book I finally managed to get right after fighting with it for three days.
Then I remember.
And that part never seems to get easier.
I don't know what happens when we die. I wish I did. I've thought about it more than I ever wanted to.
But I wrote a story where a brother and sister can still talk to each other. Where memories don't always stay where they belong. Where love can reach across things it probably shouldn't be able to.
Maybe that's just science fiction.
Or maybe it's a guy who misses two people so badly that he needed to imagine a world where the conversations didn't have to end.
I don't know.
What I do know is that I wouldn't trade the five years I had with Paula to avoid the pain of losing her. And I wouldn't give up a single memory of Billy just because remembering him sometimes hurts.
That's part of what these books are about.
3:47: Ecstasy is for Billy and Paula.
It's also for the people who are still here, the ones who keep showing up, even when I'm not particularly good company. They matter more than they probably realize.
And if you've ever lost somebody you loved, maybe you'll understand why I wrote this.
Because sometimes it's not the big things that get you.
It's a word somebody was excited to tell you about.
A laugh you can still hear in your head.
Or lying in bed at night, waiting for somebody to tap your arm.
Sean Wilson
Author of the Anchor City Trilogy