I was stunned when I actually finished, and I was like, 'Gosh, I have enough time – the book’s not coming out until October – that this would be awesome if it came out like a prequel before the novel to get people interested in the Finley Sisters.' It’s just a great little appetizer to lead into the novel. I figure I must have finished it in a couple months, which is really fast for me. Usually it takes me a year, a year and a half to write a book, but this – and, of course, this is shorter because this is a novella, but it’s almost a full-length novel word count wise – just took off for me. I wrote it much more quickly than anything I’ve written before.

I don’t know what the hell I’m doing I’ll just see what happens. I just thought I’ll just start and see what happens. I wanted to talk more about what happened to these kids. I thought I’d really like to know, show and write more about how they got to be who they’ve become. And as I was reading through it, I kept thinking that I wanted to know more about these girls because this novel takes place much later in the Finley Sisters’ lives, when they’re middle aged. Lesley Kagen: I’d actually completed the novel, 'The Resurrection of Tess Blessing,' first. : How did you come up with the story idea for 'The Undertaking of Tess,' the e-novella? OnMilwaukee got a chance to talk with Kagen about her two new works, why she wanted to come back to these characters, the books’ Wisconsin and Milwaukee settings, and what books inspired her (spoiler alert: all of them). Set in Wisconsin, Kagen became so enraptured by the characters unfolding on the page that she needed to write more about them, so she wrote 'The Undertaking of Tess,' an e-novella officially released on Tuesday, July 29 that serves as a kind of childhood prequel.

The Wisconsin-based author started by writing her latest novel, 'The Resurrection of Tess Blessing,' set for release on Oct. In Lesley Kagen’s case, however, her latest work is revisiting characters that haven’t even been introduced yet. It’s not unusual for artists and writers to revisit some of their past works and explore new sides of the characters they’ve brought into the world.

The Undertaking of Tess by Lesley Kagen