On the Difficulties of Writing a Series

  

It starts innocently enough with one book. I know very few authors who knew right away that they wanted to write a series with the same characters. It just worked out that way. The plot was great, the characters were fleshed out, the setting broad enough to allow for more stories. Why not write another one?

A series offers the opportunity to develop characters, to reveal more details, to give them more depth. The characters become a family in which the author enjoys being a guest. The main characters make new friends or enemies, suffer bad times and enjoy good ones, meet a partner for life, get married, and have children.

The difficulty, however, is to keep coming up with new and good plots that will keep readers entertained and engaged enough to want to read more adventures. It's not enough to create lovable characters and follow them through their lives. At the same time, each plot must be a reason in itself for the reader to want to read the book. Therefore, the author must know when it is better to end the series.

Unfortunately, I have read some book series that should have ended after the fifth book, not the tenth. It's a shame when even successful authors fall into this trap of writing boring, uninspired texts just because the publisher demands it or there is a contract for more books. On the other hand, there are series that I devoured simply because each new book brought new developments and was simply well written.

One last note: I've gotten into the habit of keeping a file in which I write down all the details for every character that appears in the books. This applies to physical appearance as well as to all experiences, preferences, and even fears the character suffers throughout the story. It helps if the character is portrayed as being afraid of water in book one, but has to save a drowning man from a lake in book five. The character shouldn't be too enthusiastic about it...

 

Here’s an excerpt from Clandestine Dealings (book #8 in the series with Nick & Jacklyn).

The two main characters in a dispute about how to spend the Fourth of July…

 

Jacklyn could always tell Nicolas’s mood when he entered their home. The way he dropped his badge and gun on the shelf, the way he took off his jacket and shoes, and the way he looked at her. This evening, he was tired but also grumpy.

She flashed a smile, smacked a kiss on his lips, and asked how his day had been.

“Tiresome.” He went to the bedroom to take off his clothes. “Too many cases, no leads, nothing to go on. It feels like walking through molasses. Frustrating.”

From behind, she put her hands on his shoulders. “We have a day off tomorrow. You can relax.”

“Is that so? Just speaking of frustrating—this reaches a higher level.” He turned around. “Do we have to leave at all?” He kissed her chastely. “Wouldn’t it be nice to stay here and do nothing?”

She had heard the plea before. “We agreed on participating—”

“You told me we would spend the holiday with your parents at their home. You didn’t ask for my agreement.”

Jacklyn let go, shrugging. “My parents want to spend time with us. That’s okay, I think. Not that unusual.”

“Your mom doesn’t want to meet with me. She wants to see her daughter, and you made it clear she can’t have you without having me. That’s different.” He turned to the drawer for fresh underwear.

Jacklyn tried for a soothing tone, even though she was annoyed that they led the conversation in a loop every year. “It’s not that she doesn’t like you.”

“She accepted her daughter’s decision to live with a loser instead of a rich banker.”

“You forgot to mention he should be old and ugly.” Her smile, meant to calm his mood, was wasted.

“She made it very clear she wanted a better match for her daughter, and I’m a walking disappointment she can’t get rid of. There’s more acceptance in a shark that he can’t catch every prey.” He went to the bathroom. “Every time I’m at your parent’s home, she shows off with what they have and what you will inherit—always accompanied by a look that says that I shouldn’t be the man to share that wealth with you.” He dropped his underwear and switched on the shower. “She’s probably happy we don’t intend to get married.”

Jacklyn took off her pants and shirt and joined him under the spray of water. She wouldn’t follow the way the conversation was turning. “Don’t be glum. Please, don’t be angry about my mom. It’s not worth it.”

Nicolas turned to her, hanging his head. “Why can’t we spend the Fourth of July here? Why the hassle? Isn’t there any other time you can visit your parents? Without me?”

She cupped his cheeks and looked him deep in the eyes. “I’m proud of you, Nick. I’m proud that you are a successful agent, that you work hard and do a dangerous job. You risk your life every day.”

“In your mom’s eyes—”

“My mom’s opinion means shit to me.” She kissed him. “You should know that by now.” When he still didn’t look convinced, she added, “We’ll make a deal. If my mom behaves badly again, we spend the next holiday here. Just the two of us.”

“The next holidays I want you for myself and not to pay attention to your parents’ interests, which are far away from the real world.”

“That’s not true. My father—”

Nicolas put a finger on her lips. “Deal.” He pulled her under the warm water to kiss and embrace her.

Jacklyn melted in his arms, happy to have turned the mood around. The night was looking up.

* * *

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Keeping Track

 How do you keep track of books you've read? Do you have a system? 

It's similar to keeping track of books I've written. So many times I've had to go back to files so I don't get hair or eye colour wrong. Or I need to find the background details for me as an author that enhances the book for you a reader.

I'm exited to show you all the book planner tracker that I created for readers. It was a challenge, but I loved every minute of it. 

It's available as a 8 1/2 x 11, full colour journal, through Amazon. Also as a complimentary download for newsletter subscribers. 

Take a look!

Amazon

 Coming in June! A multi author anthology with proceeds going to SickKidsFoundation in Toronto. A group of authors attending Ignite Your Soul signing in August came together for this project, It releases on June 19. My story is a very hot quickie about a woman trying to get over her fear of the p*nis by getting a lap dance. 

It's a long weekend here in Canada. My plans are to write and garden. Time to get those plants in the ground! Have a great weekend everyone!

www.shanagray.com

What to Write...

 

 

    “So, I hear you’re a writer?” The man in the blue shirt looks rather smug, arch too. “Let me tell you about something that happened to me. I bet you could make a great story out of it.”

      And then, with or without your acquiescence, he proceeds to roll out an incident or a lifetime schema that is nothing less than… dull.

      Or the woman seated next to you at a table rattles on about her daughter, her daughter’s wedding, her daughter’s friends, her daughter’s children. “You could write a whole book about my daughter,” she concludes proudly.

 

     You know what I mean. It’s happened hundreds of times to all of us. My most persistent self-appointed muse, was Maria. For six months of every year, Maria and I walked together. We’d meet at five in the evening, set out along the trails and ancient green roads linking fields and orchards with tiny Bavarian villages. The countryside was exquisite: rolling hills, deep forests. Summer smelt like hot, ripe wheat; autumn had the tang of apples; and the hot-breathed cows puffed, watched indolently as we passed. When we reached a bar or inn, we’d stop for a drink, then turn back, homeward, just as evening mists were folding over the meadows.

            

   Bavaria was a beautiful, exquisite country, but what did Maria see? She was an inveterate talker, a woman who lived in the past. She and her (rather unpleasant) husband had recently come from Cologne, and she knew no one down in Bavaria. She’d left her friends behind, a whole social whirl, and now, lonely, unhappy, she could only conjure up memories of a cheerier life, good laughs and vanished lovers.

            

    I was on the receiving end of Maria’s logorrhea; what did I get out of it? Quite a bit. I’d also just arrived in the area, was learning German. At first, I understood little — if any — of Maria’s verbal waterfall. But eventually, after many months, her words coalesced into a language I too was able to use. And, amusingly, I began to feel as though I knew Maria’s old friends, those solid, middle-class women who painted, had jewelry and clothing shops, had fallen in love with other men or been divorced by unfaithful husbands. And I could picture, perfectly clearly, the local, rather elegant tavern where all met and laughed away bright nights.

     “You have to write about this,” Maria said over and over. “You have to write about my life.”

      Why? It didn’t sound like a particularly interesting life. There was nothing terribly original, nothing noble; there were no great plots, and no glory. Why write about it?

 

      Why do writers write what they do? I’d love to ask you all because the answers would be fascinating. Do you write, like Georges Simenon, to show how characters and an atmosphere create a crime? Do some writers of romantic suspense use strong heroes and feisty heroines as a fantasy panacea to their own fear of difficult times? Are writers of time travel books searching for a confirmation of eternity and higher powers? Certainly many of us create an alternative self in our stories, and a life so different from our own.

 

    Thirty years have passed since my last walk with Maria. I no longer live in Bavaria, but either does she. She returned to the area around Cologne, to her friends. What happened to them all? How did their stories pan out? I’ll never know. But I will do what she asked — write her story. Why? To catch a moment in time, paint the portrait of a society, mark down the tales she entrusted me with.

I came to watch the birds

Birdwatchers started as a writing experiment. I had the explicit intent to write an autistic first-person protagonist, a mentally taxing exercise of putting myself in the shoes of someone who saw, understood and interacted with the world differently to how I did.

In my former field of work, we referred to this as creating “with empathy”. The idea being that what you’re creating is not about you flexing your skills and showing off how well you can translate your ideas to the canvas. It’s about the subject of your creation experiencing the environment you create for them.

As a designer, my subject was the user of the system or website I was designing. As a writer, my subject is my fictional character.

To respectfully write an autistic protagonist, it would be wholly inappropriate to project my simplified ideas based on external observations and “facts” about autistic people. In fact, it’s pretty rude to do this in real life too. Real people are complex, often judged too quickly before enough data is known about their perceptions, feelings and motivations. Each individual, autistic or otherwise, has a rich complex inner world and subjective experience of life.

So I tried to imagine more deeply what those commonly cited external observations might suggest about what’s going on inside. Rigidity, staring, bluntness, and whatever else gets associated with people on the spectrum surely have a lot more beneath the surface that what the tropes imply. Adults are so rarely a case of “point A to point B” because so much in our lives will have shaped the way we think and feel.

What if a person doesn’t cling to routine just because they’re fussy? What if they’re fussy as a form of self-preservation in a hostile and unpredictable environment? (In the world of schema therapy, this can be known as a “coping mode”.) What if bluntness isn’t a sign of low empathy and low awareness, but the laconic tip of a hyper-aware over-thinking iceberg?

It was hard, trying to imagine all this. Working against one’s own habit of lazy thinking is an exhausting endeavour. What I didn’t imagine was how close my imaginings would be.

Years after the story came out, I received an autism diagnosis of my own. To that end, Birdwatchers may well have been an indirect form of self-exploration, in that writing Robin’s character allowed me to understand and contextualise some of my own lived experience as an undiagnosed spectrum kid.

I was lucky. Not every autistic person is afforded the space and opportunity to think about this before someone slaps a label on them. Many have been conditioned to hate themselves because of certain stereotypes and misunderstandings, compounded over many years. And the lack of autism awareness in mainstream conversation means they’re more likely to encounter harmful judgements before any helpful context.

I don’t intentionally write autistic fiction, but my diagnosing clinician pointed out that the characters I write are all probably autistic because they came from my brain. In recent years, I learned the term for unlabelled autistic characters is “autistic coded”, which resonates nicely with me. You just are what you are, regardless of what people call you.

Photo by Wolfgang Hasselmann on Unsplash

Birdwatchers by JL Peridot

She looks at me and sits up. Her body is exposed now, breasts heaving as her breath comes back to her. She keeps her eyes on me while she re-does her hair and rests the sunglasses on her head. She smiles.

“Why didn’t you take a picture?” she asks. “That’s what you came here for, wasn’t it?”

“N … no,” I say. I hold up the camera, fighting the weight of the lens. “I came to watch the birds.”

She sits back and crosses her legs in front of her. She points her toes towards me, then at the sky, then back to me. She licks her lips.

“So …” Her smile deepens. “Watch the birds then.”

🦜 Read the rest on jlperidot.com 🦜

---

JL Peridot writes love letters to the future on devices from the past. Visit jlperidot.com for the full catalogue of her work.

This article was originally published at JL Peridot’s blog.

We recently celebrated Mother’s Day, and I was thinking about all the inspiring women in my life. I’ve raised my kids alongside a group of other moms and we’ve muddled through a lot of shenanigans. I’ve managed to come out the other side feeling proud of the sons I’ve raised and thankful that I had a great group of women by my side.  

Recently I started dancing with a group of Royal Scottish Country dancers, and I’ve met another group of inspiring women. They’re energetic, patient with new dancers, welcoming, friendly, and oh-so-smart, quickly learning and mastering all the steps to the dances. And, it turns out, they’re in their eighties – and one is ninety! I didn’t believe it when I learned that. I would’ve sworn they were all ten to fifteen years younger. Scottish Country dancing is lively with reels and jigs, done with a skipping step that makes you feel like a kid, and the occasional slower more elegant Strathspey. It’s a ton of fun but there is a lot of memory work involved as you move through the different positions in the dance. It obviously keeps you young! I’m so inspired by these women – I hope to carry myself into the future with the same elegance and grace.

 

If you’d like to hang out with another group of inspiring women and escape into a sassy, sexy, medical romcom, pick up a copy of Perfectly Reasonable. Margo’s life is a bit topsy turvy at the moment as she sorts out her career, but she has a best friend who sticks by her side, and a new admirer who forces her to look at things a little differently! 

 

In Perfectly Reasonable, Trace is applying to medical school. With a little help from Margo, he plans to ace the dreaded medical school interview. Now he just has to convince Margo to help him!

 

Margo MacMillan finished medical school, but in the process, her self-confidence and self-esteem took a beating. So for the sake of self-preservation, she’s stepped away from medicine to re-group. In the meantime, painting soothes her soul and pays the bills. 

 

Trace Bennett set his sights on a medical degree and has to prepare the perfect medical school application. His big plan is to paint his condo for a little feng shui divine luck. When Margo shows up to paint, he realizes he’s found exactly what he’s looking for. He just has to convince Margo to share more than the art of medicine. 

 

She’s got it. He wants it. It’s Perfectly Reasonable.

 

Enjoy an excerpt ~

“So, you’re a doctor,” Trace said slowly.

Jeez. Back to that. “Yup.”

“How come a doctor is painting my living room?”

“Because you’re paying twice the usual fee,” Margo said with a cheeky grin.

“Shouldn’t you be…doctoring?”

Her smile slipped. He sounded like her mother. All that time, all that money, blah, blah, blah. “I could be, but at the moment, I’m painting.” She pointed to the paint sample hanging on the wall. “That’s the color I chose.”

He looked over. “I like it. Hopefully it will work.”

“I think it’ll work. Blue’s a neutral color. Looks good in this lighting and it’ll be a great backdrop with your metal furniture.”

“Hm-mm. I’m hoping it’ll be lucky.”

“Lucky?”

“Feng shui. Water and metal elements, á la blue paint and metal furniture, in the west and southwest rooms are supposed to bring divine luck this year. Good bye beige and wooden antiques.”

She smiled at him. He wants to get lucky? Look at those abs. Really, any color would do. “Sounds like you’ve researched this.”

He took a sip of coffee and set the cup down. “I have. I’m applying to medicine. Again. I’m giving it one last chance, and this time I’m doing it properly.”

“Medicine.”

“Yes.”

“And you think feng shui will help?” She reached for a small tool in the outer pocket of the tote bag and used it to pry open the lid from the first can of paint.

“Couldn’t hurt. And I want to cover all the bases. If I can get a little divine luck on my side, I’m all for it.”

She smiled at him as she stirred the paint. Hopefully he had more than feng shui up his sleeve. “I’ll get this done and get you started. I’m happy to help.” Especially if it meant her bills would get paid.

“Are you? You could be handy.”

“Oh I’m definitely handy,” she said with a smile.

 

 

Buy link (free in Kindle Unlimited):  https://www.amazon.com/Perfectly-Reasonable-Book-2-ebook/dp/B09D6WFHNM

 

 

Award-winning author Linda O’Connor started writing romantic comedies when she needed a creative outlet other than subtly rearranging the displays at a local home décor store. Her books have enjoyed bestseller status. When not writing, she’s a physician at an Urgent Care Clinic. She shares her medical knowledge in fast-paced, well-written, sexy romances – with an unexpected twist. Her favourite prescription to write? Laugh every day. Love every minute. 

 

Linda loves to connect with readers ~ 

Website:  https://www.lindaoconnor.net

Facebook:  https://www.facebook.com/LindaOConnorAuthor

Twitter:  https://twitter.com/LindaOConnor98

Amazon Author Page:  https://www.amazon.com/Linda-OConnor/e/B00S7CNLEA

 

Tags:

Medical romance, romantic comedy, contemporary romance, The Perfectly Series, series, doctors, medical school, interviews

Choosing the right words

As I go through and self-edit my latest book, I am at the stage where I'm nitpicking my word choices. Words do matter. This manuscript has been edited by others, but sometimes you need to take the time and really comb through your story. I found some verbs that didn't seem strong enough. I use "fill" a lot in my writing. For example: Smoke filled the room. There are better word choices for this sentence like "Smoke permeated the room." It's much stronger and describes the scene better. "Fill" works most of the time, but if a stronger verb can be used, that's the wiser choice. Your readers will appreciate you doing your best to make their experience more enjoyable.

So take the time to self-edit your story before hitting that publishing button.

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Only a woman with Fae blood can stop the Roman Ninth legion from occupying her homeland, but the cost is high.

Genre: Historical fiction fantasy romance

Tropes: Opposites Attract, Love Triangle, Secrets, Magic, Fated, Different Worlds

Available in Kindle, Print, and Kindle Unlimited

Buy Link: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BYB1FGL8

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