Michael asked Olen Steinhauer:

What are some of the pros and cons for you, the writer, on series versus stand alone novels? I find it interesting that you do both very well. Looking forward to All the Old Knives!

Olen Steinhauer Thanks for saying I do both well. The primary difference between them is in how I think of them when writing. To me, a series is less a series than a multi-volume novel, which is why I like to know going into it how many books I'm going to write. The Yalta Boulevard sequence was always going to be five books, so while each novel was self-contained I also thought of them within the sequence, and I was able to build up certain ideas over the years. The Milo Weaver books were always going to be a trilogy, which is why there's a single meta-narrative that connects them (though by the end of it I realized there was more to tell about Milo, so I left it open).

The standalones are, in a way, more demanding because all the storylines need to be wrapped up. And an entire world needs to be recreated each time.

Do I prefer one? I'm not sure. Each, to be sure, is hard work!

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