Writing Series
I noticed in the comments of our DameCon post that there were several people asking questions about series–both about why to write them and how to write them. I now have four series out (three complete and one ongoing) so I thought this was probably a good question for me to tackle.
First, I’m going to address the question of why to write a series. Naturally, there are a lot of different reasons why authors choose to write series and not all reasons apply to all authors, but here are some of the big ones for me.
Series sell. I’m sure this is no big shocker to anyone who’s set foot in a bookstore in the last decade. Look on the romance, YA, and f/sf shelves, and you’ll see the preponderance of books in series. A writer hoping to make a living in this business has a lot of incentive to come up with series ideas as opposed to standalone ideas. This is particularly true in any kind of book that has paranormal elements. How many standalone books do you see on those shelves? Very few. That’s just a fact of the business, and one you can’t ignore if you want to make a career out of writing. For paranormal books (and I’m talking about genre books, not literary ones, which are an entirely different story), the publishing industry expects series.
Readers love them. The reason paranormal series sell is that readers love them. Speaking as an avid reader myself, I love reading the first book of a series because I know if I fall in love with the book I’m reading, there will be more to come. More books that will have the same characters, world, and voice I’ve fallen in love with. More continuity, more large-scale conflict, more emotional commitment. Yes, if an author I love puts out a new book that isn’t connected to his/her earlier books, I will still go out and buy it. And I may love it. But with a book that continues a series I already love, I’m much, much more certain. I suspect that’s true of other readers as well.
A great world has room for more than one story. The hallmark of a great paranormal series is great worldbuilding. Creating the world is such a huge part of the process of writing a paranormal book, and the world you create is so much larger in your mind than what actually makes it into the book. Depending on what kind of world you’re creating, you have to make up your own magic system, your own creatures–along with the “rules” for each of these creatures–your own setting, your own history. Once you’ve put all this work into creating a complex and detailed world, it seems a shame to only set one story there. It’s like a chef walking into a huge pantry stocked with every gourmet food in the world and deciding to make one turkey sandwich. Are you really going to let all that great food go to waste? (Can you tell I’ve been watching a lot of cooking shows lately?)
You can do more of everything with a series. Not only can you do more worldbuilding, but you can create larger-scale conflicts. Conflicts so epic they can’t possibly be fixed in one book. You can do more character development, give your characters more time to grow and change. You can also have more characters in your cast, because you have room for more subplots involving secondary characters. You can create longer-lasting suspense and tension as the issues continue to twist and grow through the series arc. You can just flat-out do more.
So those are some of the reasons I particularly like to write (and read) series. Of course, once you set out to write a series, you have to actually figure out what to do with all these ideas and characters and conflicts you’ve so excited about writing, and that can be quite a challenge. Because in all things writing, there are as many methods as there are writers, I’m not going to tell you how you should write your series. What I can talk about with some authority is how I’ve written mine.
Let me start by explaining one of the toughest aspects of writing series: unless it’s a planned trilogy for which all three books are under contract, you don’t really know how many books there will be in the series. You may know how many books you have planned (or you may not), but plans and reality are not the same thing. A really good series will end with a wonderfully satisfying finale where both the plot and the characters’ story arcs are resolved. Which makes it very hard to know how to write the final book under contract in a series if you don’t know whether it’s really the final book or not. Possibly the hardest book I’ve ever written was THE DEVIL’S PLAYGROUND, because I was in just such a situation. My agent, editor, and I all thought there were going to be more books in the series; however, since I didn’t have a contract for more books, I wanted to make sure not to leave my faithful readers in the lurch. Writing a book at all is hard enough; trying to write a book that works either as a series finale or as a book in a continuing series is murder! (I’m glad I made the effort, though, since it turned out there weren’t going to be more books in the series after all . . . I’d have been very unhappy if I’d left the main plot arc unresolved, as I’m sure my readers would have been.)
I recently was faced with a similar situation with the Faeriewalker series, but I didn’t want to put myself in the same position I’d been in with Morgan Kingsley. I wanted to end the series, or to not end the series. In this case, I chose to end the series, because I saw in my mind’s eye a clear end point for Dana’s character arc, and for me, plotting out a series is more about plotting the protagonist’s character arc than the actual plot. (Okay, that sounds weird, but I hope it makes at least minimal sense.) Dana begins the series as something of a helpless bystander, in way over her head and controlled (to some extent) by the adults in her life who have power over her. When I thought about how to end the series, I thought not so much about what plot points had to occur, but how Dana had to grow in order to seize control of her own life.
I get a lot of emails and tweets from Faeriewalker fans asking me to write more books in the series. There are certainly places I could go with the plot, and I’m sure Dana has more room to grow. Someday, I may even write some more. I still love Dana, and I still love the world. (And yes, I love the Erlking, who’s possibly one of my favorite characters I’ve ever written. 
But the series as I originally envisioned it is over. It was over when I wrote (I’m typing the following in white text, which you can highlight to view if you’d like, or you can ignore if you don’t want anything spoilery): I was just a scared kid, after all. But I was a scared kid who was sick to death of being pushed around and manipulated.I might be in a room with two of the most powerful people in Faerie, but thanks to my unusual magic, I was one of the most powerful people in Faerie, too. And it was time to prove it.
To me, that was the big life lesson Dana had to learn over the course of the series. Once she learned it, I felt a sense of closure that satisfies me as an author. But one thing I’m sure we all know: authors and readers don’t always agree when series should end. How many series have you loved at the beginning then eventually fallen out of love with? I know it’s happened to me a lot, where I feel that the author has continued writing the series long after I’ve stopped being interested. How often has an author ended a series when you desperately wish he or she would write more? I’ve experienced that frustration, too. We all have. So there is no hard and fast rule an author can follow. If a series is selling well, the publisher (and the readers) will keep asking for more, regardless of whether the author feels the series is over or not. If the series isn’t selling well (or isn’t selling as well as the publisher would like), then even if the author isn’t finished, there probably won’t be any more books.
Right now, I’m in that crucial in-between stage with my Nikki Glass series. I’ve turned in the second book in the series (DEADLY DESCENDANT, which is due out in May of next year) and am waiting to find out what the fate of the series will be. I wrote DEADLY under the assumption that there would be more books, because even though I don’t have a clear idea how many books I want there to be in that series, I know it’s more than two. Sometimes, I really envy the people who go into series knowing exactly how many books they’re planning for, but that doesn’t seem to be the way things work for me. At least up until now. But if there’s one thing I’ve learned about my writing, it’s that nothing stays the same. So who knows. Maybe the next series I publish will be a planned trilogy–with all the books safely under contract from the start. Stranger things have happened.
Readers on Deadline (ROD #33)
- Dame Rinda
UPDATE: Heather Dearly guessed! The flash fiction pieces below were written by:
1. Devon Monk
2. Rinda Elliott
3. Rachel Vincent.
Thank you so much for playing!
We changed up the ROD last month and we’re putting up three pieces of flash fiction. You guys get to guess which Dame wrote what. First one to guess correctly wins a $25 Amazon gift certificate! The usual ROD will return next month on schedule which is the first Thursday of the month.
1.
“Dreams come true, my ass.”
Snow stared up from the bottom of the hole, hands on hips.
A man hung by a noose from the rafters above her.
He had good shoes.
Wondered how that bitch in the woods got him. Probably promised him life. His type were always looking to rejoin the living. Tired of the taste of brains, she supposed.
Stupid. Him, for wanting to change. Her, for believing that apple she ate wasn’t poisonous.
So much for being alive.
No more living, no more dreaming. Revenge, however, was still an option.
Snow pulled her knife, pricked a finger. Three drops of blood. One for each wish if she made it quick.
“Dead guy, re-alive.”
The fancy shoes jerked.
“Son of a bitch,” he wheezed. “I’m gonna kill that witch.”
“Two swords.”
“Hello?” he called.
She gauged the height of the hole.
“Dwarves. Seven.”
“Dwarves?”
“Not fighting her alone.” She motioned to the shorties, then used them as a ladder and climbed out of the hole.
Dead guy had a good face to go with those good shoes. Her heart would flutter–if it still beat.
“So.” She cut his rope. “How’s revenge sound?”
“With you?” He picked up a sword. Gave her a wicked grin. “Like a dream come true.”
She hefted the other sword. “Good. Let’s go get us some happily ever after.” Snow marched out, dead guy beside her, seven little zombies trailing behind.
That bitch was going to regret dumping her in a wishing well.
2.
Coherence came to her in snatches of time that lasted minutes, long enough to realize she had no idea where she was before the blur of violence and pain spun her back into the creature-mind abyss. Sometimes, she awakened to the metallic tang of blood on her tongue or chunks of flesh lodged in her throat.
“Do you remember killing them?”
This time lucidity came with a bright, hanging lamp, angry voices and a consuming return of the pain. Chains held her to a chair. They’d forgotten about the broken bones. Bones that needed the food. The creature inside moaned and she sniffed as the men drew closer.
“See that? She scents the air like an animal.” This voice, deep and scratchy, brought familiarity. “Claws are new.”
“That’s how she got away. Scaled the fucking wall days before they were scheduled to go into the well after her. Had to shoot her to catch her but she’d already fed. A lot.”
She focused on the little one as he crept closer and brushed her long, tangled black hair aside. “Wait, I know her! Why’d they throw in one of their own? Wasn’t she the genius?”
“They wanted a smart one.”
Horror turned the small man’s face pale. “Why?”
She growled.
Deep and scratchy pushed the little man aside, grinned. “You can’t hurt us,” he whispered. “We have you restrained.”
Her lips curled as the broken bones turned fluid under her skin. The first chain hit the floor with a loud clang.
3.
It took about a second to fall to the bottom of the well on the edge of town. Two or three if you count my struggle before they threw me down. The climb back up took more than an hour, thanks to my concussion, sprained wrist, and an assortment of deep bruises.
If the well had been full, I might have drowned. If it had been empty, I would have broken several bones. But thick, squishy mud, as it turns out, is a condemned woman’s best friend. Based on the pile of bones and decaying scraps of clothing mired in the muck, few women had been as lucky as I. I thought about those others, slowly starving, alone and in pain, listening to sounds of the town above as life went on without them.
It was difficult to imagine a worse death, but I’d had time to think of several as I climbed. I’d had time to plan. To visualize my hands clutching a knife with each tenuous grip on the mortar beneath my fingers. To picture my blade piercing flesh, delivering justice in the names of those who went before me. In honor of the foundation of mud and bones from which I rose to demand accountability. Restitution.
Their confessions would sound like screams. Their atonement would taste like blood. And their defeat would serve as warning to tyrants everywhere that down is not out. Gone is not forgotten.
And I am still here.
Question Day
Hello everyone!
In honor of DameCon (since I haven’t posted since that auspicious date) and in honor of the Iron Wyrm revisions I just finished yesterday (which scraped the inside of my skull cleaner than Miss B can lick a bowl that once held bacon) it’s Question Day!
From now until 6pm PST, I’ll be checking the comments at this post and answering as many questions as I can. Fellow Dames might–might–pop in too. You can ask about writing, publishing, or my series and characters. (Though be prepared for me not to give spoilers. I hate giving spoilers.) Or other Dames’ series and characters–I’m sure they’d love to share!
Ready? OK.
GO.
New Release Tuesday
Happy Tuesday! There are so many lovely new books out this week, and several from last week that I didn’t want to slip by! You can click on the covers for a direct link to Amazon.
Thank you to Jackie Morgan at Literary Escapism for compiling such a fabulous list.
ANGELS OF DARKNESS – Ilona Andrews, Nalini Singh, Meljean Brook, Sharon Shinn
Tales of alpha angels…from four alpha authors.
They soar through the night, unearthly creatures of legends and lore. Four masters of urban fantasy and paranormal romance explore the rapture of the heavens above, and the darkness below in four all-new stories of angels and guardians, and good and evil.
Dark magic, unknown enemies, monsters of every stripe—FBI profiler Jace Valchek has seen it all. In this bizarre parallel universe, shape-shifting werewolves and blood-thirsty vampires don’t even warrant a raised eyebrow. That is, until Jace has to face what life might look like as one of them …
It starts off as just another run-of-the-mill assignment: to track down the rogue don of a mafia werewolf family before he upsets the delicate balance of the underworld. But Jace wasn’t counting on being bitten…and soon she’s fighting the growing wolf inside her with a startling antidote—vampirism. Stopping a bloody gangland war won’t be easy when Jace is feeling some new, and very inhuman, desires …
INFERNO’S KISS – Monica Burns
The laws of desire…
Dante Condellaire, heir apparent to the Sicari Lords, knows that being a true leader means sacrifice. For Dante it was relinquishing all erotic pleasures. But he never expected his willpower to be tested so fiercely by Cleopatra Vorenus, expert assassin of the Order, and daughter of the man he is positioned to succeed.
The rules of battle…
Cleo prefers working alone–until she meets Dante who shares her goal: to destroy a Praetorian stronghold where Sicari women are imprisoned for devious purposes. Bringing the mission off without a hitch pumps up more than their resolve. It sets off a sexual spark too combustible to ignore.
Are all made to be broken.
As their attraction flares like an inferno, the stakes are raised. So are the risks. Before the mission is over, Dante and Cleo will be plunged into a dangerous conspiracy where a traitor threatens the very foundation of the Order, as well as the fiery bond between Dante and Cleo–warriors and lovers now torn between duty and desire.
WOLF AT THE DOOR – MaryJanice Davidson
The howlingly good spin-off of the Undead series from the New York Times bestselling author.
Rachel, a werewolf/accountant, is asked to keep one eye on Vampire Queen Betsy Taylor and the other peeled for a rogue werewolf who’s itching to start a war. But her attention is mostly on a sexy, mysterious stranger she wishes she could trust.
SACRED BAND – David Anthony Durham
With the first two books in the Acacia Trilogy, Acacia and The Other Lands, David Anthony Durham has created a vast and engrossing canvas of a world in turmoil, where the surviving children of a royal dynasty are on a quest to realize their fates—and perhaps right ancient wrongs once and for all. As The Sacred Band begins, one of them, Queen Corinn, bestrides the world as a result of her mastery of spells found in the ancient Book of Elenet. Her younger brother, Dariel, has been sent on a perilous mission to the Other Lands, while her sister, Mena, travels to the far north to confront an invasion of the feared race of the Auldek. Their separate trajectories will converge in a series of world-shaping, earth-shattering battles, all rendered with vividly imagined detail and in heroic scale.
David Anthony Durham concludes his tale of kingdoms in collision in an exciting fashion. His fictional world is at once realistic and fantastic, informed with an eloquent and distinctively Shakespearean sensibility.
DOWN THESE STRANGE STREETS – Charlaine Harris, Patricia Briggs, Diana Gabaldon, Simon R. Green, S.M. Stirling, Carrie Vaughn…and more
All new strange cases of death and magic in the city by some of the biggest names in urban fantasy.
In this all-new collection of urban fantasy stories, editors George R.R. Martin and Gardner Dozois explore the places where mystery waits at the end of every alley and where the things that go bump in the night have something to fear…
Includes stories by New York Times bestselling authors Charlaine Harris, Patricia Briggs, Diana Gabaldon, Simon R. Green, S. M. Stirling, and Carrie Vaughn, as well as tales by Glen Cook, Bradley Denton, M.L.N. Hanover, Conn Iggulden, Laurie R. King, Joe R. Lansdale, John Maddox Roberts, Steven Saylor, Melinda Snodgrass, and Lisa Tuttle.
SERPENT’S KISS – Thea Harrison
Recently, Vampire Queen Carling’s power has become erratic, forcing her followers to flee. Wyr sentinel Rune is drawn to the ailing Queen and decides to help find a cure for the serpent’s kiss-the vampyric disease that’s killing her. With their desire for each other escalating they will have to rely on each other if they have any hope of surviving the serpent’s kiss…
IN MEMORIES WE FEAR – Barb Hendee
A series of killings in England point to a new-and feral-vampire. Vampires Eleisha and Philip and their human companion travel to London to make contact with the terrified creature, to offer him sanctuary and stop the bloodshed. But the vampire they find is not what they expected…
BLOODSTONE – Nancy Holzner
They call it Deadtown: the city’s quarantined section for its inhuman and undead residents. Most humans stay far from its borders – but Victory Vaughn, Boston’s only professional demon slayer, isn’t exactly human…
Boston’s diverse South End is known for its architecture and great restaurants, not its body count. So when mutilated human corpses begin turning up in the area, the entire city takes notice. The killer-dubbed the South End Reaper-uses a curved blade for his grisly work. And even though there’s no real evidence pointing to a paranormal culprit, the deaths are straining the already-tense relations between Boston’s human and inhuman residents.
As the bodies pile up, Vicky, her formidable aunt, Mab, and her werewolf boyfriend, Kane investigate, only to find that the creature behind the carnage is after something much more than blood…
THE BLOOD COVEN VAMPIRES – Mari Mancusi
The first two Blood Coven Vampire novels-now in one volume.
Boys That Bite
When Sunny McDonald’s sister drags her to Club Fang, all she expects is a bunch of Goth kids playing at being vampires. But when a tall, handsome stranger mistakes Sunny for her dark-side-loving twin and bites her on the neck, she realizes his fangs are real-and deadly…
Stake That
Rayne McDonald had it all figured out: become the vampire mate of the Blood Coven master and live the high life for all eternity. But now, not only is Rayne fangless, but she discovers she’s destined to be a vampire slayer instead…and sexy vampire bad boy Jareth keeps getting in her way.
GANYMEDE – Cherie Priest
The air pirate Andan Cly is going straight. Well, straighter. Although he’s happy to run alcohol guns wherever the money’s good, he doesn’t think the world needs more sap, or its increasingly ugly side-effects. But becoming legit is easier said than done, and Cly’s first legal gig—a supply run for the Seattle Underground—will be paid for by sap money.
New Orleans is not Cly’s first pick for a shopping run. He loved the Big Easy once, back when he also loved a beautiful mixed-race prostitute named Josephine Early—but that was a decade ago, and he hasn’t looked back since. Jo’s still thinking about him, though, or so he learns when he gets a telegram about a peculiar piloting job. It’s a chance to complete two lucrative jobs at once, one he can’t refuse. He sends his old paramour a note and heads for New Orleans, with no idea of what he’s in for—or what she wants him to fly.
But he won’t be flying. Not exactly. Hidden at the bottom of Lake Pontchartrain lurks an astonishing war machine, an immense submersible
called the Ganymede. This prototype could end the war, if only anyone had the faintest idea of how to operate it…. If only they could sneak it past the Southern forces at the mouth of the Mississippi River… If only it hadn’t killed most of the men who’d ever set foot inside it.
But it’s those “if onlys” that will decide whether Cly and his crew will end up in the history books, or at the bottom of the ocean.
WEREWOLF IN THE NORTH WOODS – Vicki Lewis Thompson
When Abby Maddox’s grandfather swears he saw Bigfoot in the woods behind his Portland, Oregon, home, his neighbors decide to bring in a prominent anthropologist to prove him wrong. Rather than see her grandpa made a laughing stock, Abby sets out to send the professor packing…until she sees how hot he is.
Roark Wallace can’t risk having tourists comb the woods for Bigfoot-not with a local pack of werewolves to protect. When Roark meets Abby, sparks fly-but can he pursue this fiery red-head without compromising his pack?
This is where I’ve been…
So. First of all, HI! I feel like I’ve kind of fallen off the face of the Deadline Dames blog recently, which was not my intent. Like most writers I know, I’ve been BURIED in work. Which is actually a very good thing. And, for those who don’t know, I’ve had two release days in the past month. Three, if you count the Enthralled anthology. (Which is FULL of awesome stories. You should all go buy it!) And I’m still in the middle of the If I Die blog tour.
But, here I am, and I’m ready to play! Since If I Die(Soul Screamers book 5) came out on Tuesday, this will be a Soul Screamers post. So, first thing’s first…
IF I DIE is out!!!
You guys. I worked so hard on this book. It was delicate work. This is the kind of book that hinges so strongly on emotion that a single poor word choice could ruin an entire chapter. My editor and I (and another editor) worked on this book until the very. last minute. People had to stay late at work and come in early to make sure that ARCs for If I Die got printed, because we were literally working until the last hour. I emailed changes to my editor late one night while I was on vacation. She stayed up until the wee hours of the morning to input the changes by hand. I owe so many people so much thanks for the work put into this book. Because it had to be perfect.
So, is If I Die perfect? No. (Can you hear the crazy laughter in my head, or is that just me?) Of course not. Perfection isn’t the point. Nor is it a possibility. It’s the reach for perfection that matters. The willingness to dig so deeply into the story and characters that even if readers love a character, they can still see his flaws. Even if they hate a character, they can still understand his struggles. That’s what I strive for. That’s why I write. I want to tell stories that make people feel things.
Am I there yet? Some say yes. Some say no. But the answer doesn’t really matter, because A: it’s subjective and B: I’ll never stop trying. The bar will always be higher next time. But, at least for now, I’m proud of If I Die. And I need to make Before I Wake even better.
No pressure.
Interestingly enough, someone left a well-timed Soul Screamers question for me in the Dame Con post (Haven’t read it? Scroll down to Monday’s post.) That question contains a HUGE spoiler for If I Die, so I’m going to post that spoiler in white print. If you want to read it, highlight the text. But please, people, use common sense. If reading spoilers ruins a book for you, then for the love of all things literary, DON’T HIGHLIGHT. Have some willpower. Beg, steal, or borrow some willpower. But do yourself a favor and don’t spoil the book for yourself.
Everyone else, highlight below…
Question: I was wondering (and probably many other fans too), if you did not get contracted for a sequel to the Soul Screamers, would you find time to oblige us and write us a short story with more Kaylee-Tod scenes? This couple is so new, I can hardly wrap my mind around it, and I would really like to get a better glimpse of their relationship, if you know what I mean. *wink, wink*
Vanya D.
Answer: Fortunately, I have been contracted for two more Soul Screamers books. Unless something catastrophic happens, Before I Wake will be out in the summer of 2012. It’s already written. So there will definitely be more of…those scenes you were asking about. Between now and then, there will be a new Soul Screamers online novella (also already written) and the Soul Screamers omnibus, which includes “My Soul To Lose” (in print for the first time!), My Soul To Take, and My Soul To Save.
To wrap things up, if you haven’t checked out the If I Die blog tour, what are you waiting for? There are daily prizes and a grand prize, and there’s a bunch of extra content, including interviews with the major characters, a short piece called “A Day in the AfterLife of Tod,” and an interview-gone-wrong with Kaylee and Sabine.
Oh! And…I’m leaving my house! To meet readers and sign books! I’ll be at Murder By The Book tomorrow (Saturday, October 1) at 1pm, then I’ll be at Northwest Book Fest with the Smart Chicks on Sunday, October 2. Come see me! And if you do, you can have a postcard showing the cover for Shadow Bound, which I’m not planning to post online for a while. So…come see me! (Did I say that already?)
