Why Do I Write Trilogies?

I had an editor who felt that trilogies were the perfect size for readers. There was enough time to become involved in the lives of the characters without the relationship between book and reader becoming a bit loopy. She believed readers wandered off if the interconnected story lines went on and on too long. 

What I found is that I grow a bit loopy if I don’t get to play with new characters and ideas. I need to push myself to keep an edge. So, perhaps the editor was insisting on trilogies only for my sake as well as the readers’?

That doesn’t mean I don’t go back and visit past stories, as I did in ONE DANGEROUS NIGHT. The hero is from my the “Logical Man’s Guide to Dangerous Women.” Christopher Fitzhugh-Cox, the immature and spoiled Duke of Winderton, has been running from himself, from past mistakes, from feeling a failure, from losing sight of what matters in life. I couldn’t leave him out there rambling around. He need to be pulled back into the thick of things. 

And so he meets Elise Lanscarr, the youngest sister in the “Gambler’s Daughters” series. She had her own doubts and is angry with her sisters, as we all do from time to time with siblings. 

Bringing these two together gave me great joy. Hopefully, readers were happy as well. 

It also looks as if I’m going to stretch the “Gamblers’ Daughters” trilogy at well. I’m playing with a side character in A TOUCH OF STEELE. I’m just framing out the synopsis now but just as readers wonder what happened to some of the secondary characters in books, the authors do as well. Stay tuned. We shall see if a particularly haughty lord’s story reaches the books stage. (It will. The visions in my head are too strong to deny him._