The Problem with Writing a Paranormal Series

In May of this year, while in my third trimester, I began to write a new book. I managed to finish before the baby came in July. (Yay me!) The novel is the first in a series that will be at least five books long. (Sheesh, I’m long winded) Anyway, I loved writing it because it’s first person, and I’ve never finished a novel in that POV before.
So, I’m trying to figure out what I want to do with this novel. It needs work. I have to rewrite the first three chapters, add more emotion, and delete a lot of telling. I’m probably going to move it to a college town and have my MC in college as opposed to making her a recent graduate. I’m also going to add more of a mother presence for my heroine, Izzy. She’s going to have body issues brought on by her mom.
Okay, this new novel needs a lot of work, but I was up for that until I started outlining the second novel. You see, it’s an Angel/Demon series and there’s two sects of angels, so there’s two different Angel lore to keep straight and then there’s Demon lore and Fallen Angel lore, and Izzy the heroine comes with all kinds of baggage. The hero’s older than her so he’s got a lot of past drama to keep straight.
When I outlined book two, suddenly, there was another sect of Angels that needed their own lore, and the hero of this novel (Gabriel) had enough background to fill an entire othernovel. Brilliant! I’ll just write a prequel to the series. I’ll tell Gabriel’s story and intertwine it with another storyline that I’m dying to tell and I JUST HAD A BABY! I can’t even remember if I fed my five and six year old breakfast this morning, let alone recall the name of the demon who tried to kill Izzy in chapter seven. Long story short, the cells in my baby-scrambled brain haven’t meandered back to their designated spots. I’m begrudgingly coming to terms with this.  
We all have crazy phases in our lives when there’s hardly enough time to brush our teeth, never mind write a five book series. This is that time in my life, but, I have a solution to this problem, and it will ensure I keep writing. It’s called the Stand Alone Contemporary Romance Novel. The beautiful thing about the Stand Aloneis that when I’m done, I’m done. No prequels, no new characters popping up in book three, no ingenious storyline that appears in book two and requires unanticipated foreshadowing in book one. No more paranormal elements to track or sequential books to outline in order to verify they mesh harmoniously. Now I only have to keep character’s pasts and personality traits straight for one 90k book. Woo Hoo! I can totally do that on three hours of sleep with a baby drooling on my shoulder while I peck one-handed at my keyboard. Yep. Everything’s going to be easy peesy from here on out.
Next week’s blog post: Mutinous Contemporary Romance Characters and the Author who Hates Them. (So much for easy peesy… )