The Future's Bright, The Future is……

everything.

There are a great many choices that are always going to be thrown our way, and for many of them we make our decision without really thinking about it.

What shirt should I wear today, Do I want Cereal or toast for breakfast, regular or decaf. Choices are unavoidable and control every aspect of our life at some level.

As I approach the end of my novel, the end of the editing process for this particular piece, or so I hope. I find myself staring down a choice I am stumped on.

My current novel 'Through Hell and High Water' is the first of a trilogy, and so I have two more novels to write in order to complete the journey these characters need to make. At the same time I have ideas bursting in my head and on scarps of note paper for other novels, standalone novels which I am just itching to write, or at least draft down.

My dilemma is which path should I choose? Do I charge headfirst into Book 2 of the trilogy, and allow my characters that chance to inch a little closer still to the redemption they will all grow to crave? Or should I give myself a break, allow this novel to sit and stretch my mind a little but slipping into a new world and a new mindset for a while?

Surely it would be cruel to leave them in their current state while I happily go and work on something else, something new.

Then again, could it not be considered an eggs and basket situation should I push on with the trilogy. As the sales and success of the second book will be directly linked to the popularity of the first. Nobody is going to read book two of a trilogy without having read part one, and so should I give part one time to get its name spread a little before I push forward? Likewise however, by delaying it too long I risk loosing whatever audience I am lucky enough to find,  and should (touch wood repeatedly) my book be well received and become a success then I am left stranded because I will need to finish a new ' unrelated' novel before I can even start to produce the next chapter in my epic Hell tale.

Ultimately I will write all three books whether they are best sellers, no sellers or anywhere in between because at the end of the day I write for me and not for the chance of success or financial reward. I write because I love to write and have tales inside my head that I want to put on paper, and so I am leaning more towards just going on with book 2 straight away, as my mind is equally brimming with ideas and plot twists for my current friends – characters – as it is for the new ones I hope to make in other novels.

What would you recommend? Have you written a trilogy or a series of books along with individual novels? Is it s different concept and approach to writing a trilogy than a series? By that I mean, one story over 3 books, written one after the other, compared to three (or more) tales written with the same characters but each complete in its own right but perhaps sandwiched between other works.