New Ideas and thoughts on Series

I’m getting ready to come up with a new series idea for my Superromances. The Tyler Group Series that I’m finishing up now was my first ever attempt at connected stories. And I really liked it. I liked setting up the characters in one book and then seeing them through to the end in another.I was/am a little worried about readers though. I never wanted anyone to feel as if they had to read all the books in the series to understand the book they were reading now. But the truth is, For the First
Time which is out in October, I think will only really be satisfying if you’ve read An Act of Persuasion and have gotten to know Mark and his daughter Sophie first. We’ll see.

I now have a real appreciation for those people writing connected stories how much the world takes over. I’ve been with these characters now for more than a year. I feel like Ben Tyler is this personal friend I know. There are times when I thought I could really use his advice about something and wanted to call him. But I’ve run out of ideas for the series and I’m ready to move on. So this will also be my first experience leaving a connected series behind. But maybe that’s a good lesson to learn too.

I’ve read a number of series books and eventually I do get tired and leave. The characters get stale for me and the world becomes to repetitive. A perfect example is James Bond. I used to be a Bond fan for a long time. But eventually I just couldn’t watch it anymore I left when Pierce Brosnan left. But I heard great things about Skyfall and so I thought I would give it another chance. And it was a good film. But smack in the middle we have this ridiculous moment where he interacts with a beautiful woman and ends up banging her and I’m like… what purpose did this serve? Except of course it’s Bond and there has to be women and sex and martinis….It’s that fine line of meeting the expectations but not repeating everything over and over again until fans get bored. So I guess the trick is creating the world, letting people get sucked up in it, meeting expectations but then also making each new story fresh and interesting, and then letting it go when the time comes and knowing when that time is.

Wow. Writing is really hard.