How Should I Organize and Market My Series?

Seriously, I’m asking. 

Why I’m Asking You:

If you follow my blog posts or livestreams, you know I don’t consider myself an expert in writing, publishing, or marketing. I’m merely a guy on the path, learning, and sharing my experiences. But I’d like to learn from your experiences, too. I’d like to know what you think, whether you’re a reader, an author, or both like me. In other words, I’d like some advice, please.

The Situation:

I currently have five novels out in my Long Century series. I’m writing the sixth one now. It’s called The French Fiasco. Ittakes place four years after The Prussian Princeand is a direct sequel. It’s also a continuation of what I unofficially call “the Carliad,” which is named after Carl, the main character of the series, except for book four, Mexico, My Love, which is a prequel to the first three books. There, he’s only a baby and a side character at best. Confusing? Yes, I agree. I’ll explain more about that later.

I’m going to write Black James nextafter I finish The French Fiasco. James is mentioned in the original trilogy and then makes an appearance in the fourth book, Mexico, My Love. Black James will be a character novel that starts before the War of 1812. It’ll be connected to the series but outside of the main sequence. After Black James is out, I plan to return to the main story, with novels taking place after the French Fiasco. I currently have four planned, including a definitive series ender. Those books should all run in chronological order. 

I have books planned after that, but they won’t be part of the Carliad. I don’t know if I’ll write them as stand-alone or somehow incorporate them into the series. I have some other ideas for new series, too, but that’s a ways off from here, and anything can happen between now and then.

The History, Evolution, and Development of The Long Century series:

My initial idea was to create a character like Bernard Cornwell’s Richard Sharpe or C.S. Forester’s Horatio Hornblower, then write a series of novels following his adventures. Since I’m an American, I thought I would stay in my lane, put my series in the American Civil War, and still have all the swashbuckling Romanticism of an Alexandre Dumas novel or an Errol Flynn film. 

I decided to go with what I know, so I created a character from Detroit who joins the army and ends up in Tennessee. I picked the 2nd Michigan Cavalry to be his regiment since many of them mustered in Detroit and ultimately fought in the Battle of Nashville toward the end of the war. I also chose cavalry because the other military arms tend to stay in camp, march, or fight battles. Cavalry provides my character more opportunities to have out-of-camp adventures because they go out on patrol, scouting missions, and raids.

I also liked the 2nd Michigan because they fought in some interesting battles that few have covered. I studied their career in the war and then broke it into three novels, each one ending with a marquee battle much like Cornwell’s Sharpe series. I think that might have been the first departure from my original plan of placing the whole series in the American Civil War. 

You can tell that I already had a Mexican War prequel planned when I wrote book one, Rampage on the River: The Battle for Island No. 10  because I was clearly setting it up in Chapter One. I’m quite sure I also had an idea about doing a Franco-Prussian novel very early on. I’m writing that one now. What I didn’t know was that I would end up squeezing in an Austro-Prussian War novel, The Prussian Prince, because it solved a timing issue I had with my character and his story.

Regardless of these plans, I called my series The 2nd Michigan Cavalry Chroniclesin the beginning. I think that title was a holdover from when I thought I would crank out a bunch of Civil War novels as Cornwell did with his Sharpe series and the Napoleonic Wars. He later added some prequels that take place in India and an adventure in Chile after the war, but the series is predominantly Napoleonic. The covers of my first three books still have The 2nd Michigan Cavalry Chronicleswritten on them, even though the series name has changed twice since.

Mexico, My Love is a prequel to The 2nd Michigan Cavalry Chronicles. I initially set it up as such in the Amazon metadata but ran into problems. As a prequel, it wasn’t showing up on the landing pages of the other three books. It was also set to the side on the landing page for the series where it wasn’t listed with the others. I can’t say these were the causes, but Mexico, My Love did not perform as well as the others when I first published it. 

I concluded that because it wasn’t shown with the others, people weren’t buying it. It didn’t seem to be part of the series. However, even though I say that you can read any of my books out of order, Mexico, My Lovewas written to fit between Blood for Blood at Nashvilleand The Prussian Prince. It picks up with Claudette during the time of Blood for Blood at Nashville, then flashes back to when she was a girl in France. From there it tells the story of how she met Carl’s father, ran away with him, got tangled up in the Mexican-American War, and ended up in Detroit where we find her at the beginning of Rampage on the River.

It may have been my best book yet, but nobody was reading it. So I changed it from being a sequel outside of the main sequence, to book four of the series. This really made sense because books five and six reference it and even have some characters and consequences from Mexico, My Love. So it’s definitely part of the main story. 

But then it didn’t make sense to call the series The 2nd Michigan Cavalry Chronicles. The 2nd Michigan didn’t exist during the Mexican-American War. So I had to change the name of the series. I decided to call it The Cavalry Chronicles since that retained some similarity to the original title and Claudette’s lover is a cavalryman. This also helped fix Blood for Blood at Nashville, which really didn’t have enough 2nd Michigan Cavalry to have that series name. I did, however, leave the original series title on the covers to differentiate the Civil War Trilogy as an entity onto itself.

A quick sidebar here about Mexico, My Love: It also can work as an entry point into the series. I have a friend who just picked it up because he decided to read the series in chronological order. I think this is an interesting experiment. I hope he gives me feedback about experiencing it that way. The only problem is there is a, shall we say, “Empire-Strikes-Back-level” reveal in The Perils of Perryvillethat will be spoiled if you read Mexico, My Lovefirst. It would be like watching the Star Wars prequel trilogy of the early 2000s before watching the original trilogy that started in 1977. However, I’m sure a lot of young people experienced Star Wars that way and were none the worse for it.

Anyway, once I started writing The Prussian Prince, Irealized that even the series name The Cavalry Chronicleshad problems. Keeping it would force me to make every book about cavalry. I was already stretching it with Mexico, My Love, and forcing cavalry into The Prussian Princewould be contrived and limiting. So I had to change the name again. 

This time I needed to pick something that would make sense for all the books so far and not tie my hands for future books. I can’t keep changing the name of the series every time I write a new novel.

I went with The Long Century Series. It’s named after the Long Nineteenth Century. It’s a concept in historical study that frames the era from the French Revolution of 1789 to the onset of World War I in 1914. The idea is that the seeds of WWI were planted in the French Revolution. 

I like this idea. I even say the Long Nineteenth Century ends with the end of World War II since War World I was the culmination of all the political threads that ran back to the Revolution and that WWII was nothing more than continuation of the First World War. I also think WWII was the true end of Romanticism and that nineteenth-century notion of honor among enemies that I like to write to. 

Since I plan to end the series in WWI, I think The Long Century is a good title. It also affords me room to move backward and start Black James before the War of 1812, which was really an extension of the Napoleonic Wars.

The Question:

So, should Black James be Book Seven, should it be a side story outside of the main sequence, or perhaps should I make it its own series? 

When you think of it, The Long Century Series is, or will be, an American Civil War trilogy, then a Mexican-American War prequel, then a two-book Prussian saga, then a stand-alone character-driven story, followed by four more main sequence novels, yet, they’re all connected. How would you organize it? How would you present it to the readers? How would you market it? I look forward to hearing what you’ve got to say.

Thanks! 

Hey check out the preview of my latest novel: