Series are an author’s best friend

I’ve written a number of series so far, four to be exact, and I love all of them. There are some that are more popular than others like the Gaian Story series which is science fiction romance about men who are looking for the woman that matches them to marry, and Hollywood After Dark, which is vampires and werewolves looking for their mates. But I’ve never been sorry to write a series.

The Girl In The Box - Free!

For one thing readers like series. If they like the world and the characters of a book, they want to read more about them. Even if the characters of the first book only show up as minor characters in a second one, I find that readers like to see how things are going for them. And sometimes a minor character in a book is so charismatic that they end up staring in a future book.

Why do I know this? Well, for one thing, I love to read series books myself. There are a number of authors whose books I read because I picked up a copy of one of them, and then proceeded to buy all of the books in the series before and after the book I read. I’ve also found that I tend to hear from readers about the books I write, particularly things like “when is so-and-so going to get their book?”

When you hear something like that, it is very hard to decide to write something else. After all, I want to make my readers happy.

However, there are some challenges to writing a series. For one thing when you are writing a series set in a particular world with continuing characters you have to keep the world constant. If you establish that someone is blond and blue-eyed in one book, they have to stay blond and blue-eyed in the next... unless you want to fit them with contacts and dye their hair. Age is harder to work around. A 100-year-old vampire can’t turn out to be 200 years old in the next book. This can lead to challenges when you have a series with as many books as I have. I bought a copy of Scrivener to see if I couldn’t keep track of things that way and in writing this last Gaian story it helped a lot. Now I have a common nomenclature for the electronic gismos in my world that I didn't have before.

How does everyone else track details of a world? Spreadsheets, word documents, or are there other writing tools people use? That’s a good topic for discussion. What do the other writers here use to keep their world details straight?

Cheers,

Janet Miller/Cricket Starr

Stories That Write Themselves...

"Writing became such a process of discovery that I couldn't wait to get to work in the morning: I wanted to know what I was going to say." ~Sharon O'Brien

Stories that write themselves. Sounds a bit spooky. Perfect for this month of October with its ghouls, witches and bats. Is it a new form of ghost-writing? Or is it something else?



Ever have one of those stories? Ever just not want to stop writing because you couldn't wait to see what was going to happen next? We have, and let us tell you what a joy and pleasure it is to have one of those stories. The characters not only speak to you, they speak loudly and frequently and if you try to veer away from where they want you to go, the sudden silence is more than just deafening, it’s terrifying!

"Writing is flying in dreams. When you remember. When you can. When it works. It's that easy.” ― Neil Gaiman

Then, if you start paying attention to them again, the words flow – no, they gush – and the story takes flight again. Neil is so right. When it works, it really works. We want to share how one particular whirlwind story flew for us so easily we both had to pinch ourselves.

Here’s the scoop …one of the authors on our publisher’s author loop got a bill in the mail from Old Dominion Power company. The phone number made her laugh, because it was 888-Dom-Help. She, being an erotica writer, thought it funny that a Dom would need help…then she tossed that out on the author loop and several of us jumped on it with both feet.

We changed the phone number slightly (1-800-DOM-help) so as not to cause problems for the power company, developed a “bible” for the series, agreed on the number of authors to be involved/invited to write for the series, and pitched it to TPTB (the powers that be).

Waiting for approval was excruciating, but neither of us is particularly blessed with patience. When the word came down that we were good to go, the whole group turned quiet as everyone began working on their story. Of course, we had to tweak the bible just a bit to fit the developing stories.

With the series approved and the bible in place, we started tossing ideas around trying to hit on the perfect one to write about. We had several “thoughts” on the matter, some discussion, and then decided to combine two ideas into one story and BOOM – we started writing.

Cai started the story telling Arwen she’d send it to her when she got stuck. Nearly 5000 words later, Arwen got the first installment. The entire story, from beginning to end, took us three weeks to finish. Twenty-one days and we had it polished and ready to send to our editor. She loved it, made minor revisions, and Needing Harte became the first published work in the 1-800-DOM-help series.

By the way, if you're looking for the rest of that series featuring authors Desiree Holt, Francesca Hawley, Michelle Polaris, Delilah Devlin, Christine D'Abo, Samantha Cayto, Delphine Dryden, Kathy Kulig and Allie Standifer, look for the white business card with 1-800-DOM-help on all of the covers.

From a 'germ’ of an idea to an eager group of authors, we dove into that process of discovery. It flowed. We flew. To date, that is one of our best-sellers. That story made writing fun. We were both a bit sad to say good-bye to Harte and Ramey, but it made us eager to see what might come next.

What about you? What has been your experience with stories that write themselves?