WRITING A SERIES

Writing a single book is one thing; writing a series is a whole ’nother ballgame.

When we started writing A Sirius Condition, we were thinking one book would be quite enough, thank you.  As we worked our way through the storyline, we realized we had more than enough ideas for one book and decided on a trilogy.  That seemed to work for Tolkien (not counting The Hobbit or Silmarillian) and Lucas (until he decided on prequels and now plans Star Wars 7).  I joked that we’d end up with eight books, to which JJ shrieked, “Nooooo!”

Writing a series of books is like writing a series of articles for a magazine (or ezine).  I edit Psychic-Magic, a quarterly ezine on “weird, wonderful, paranormal and New Age topics”, and receive inquiries about article submission.  Our guidelines include:  "articles may be serialized and must be received in their entirety."  The reason for that was the disappearance of a contributor after the first two installments of a multi-part series were received and published.  I don’t know whether he headed to another planet, disappeared into an alternate dimension, or simply lost interest.  We certainly didn’t want to do the same with our series.

Another reason was that, as a series progresses, things change.  A character starting as a villain might end up a hero.  A good guy might take a definite turn to the Dark Side.  Foreshadowing is important.  An event in book three might require a bit of foreshadowing in books one and two; but if they’ve already been published, it’s impossible to go back and make changes.  Therefore, we felt having at least the first draft of three books would give us a good basis and we could build from there. 

We began book one in early 2009, and by December 2010 had the first drafts of books one through three done.  Then the real work started—making sure we foreshadowed, filling in description, keeping characters straight, etc. 

Each of the books was titled:  A Sirius Condition, A Sirius Misunderstanding and Sirius Repercussions.  What would link them?  The perfect name for the series:  Swagger Vasa Chronicles.

We are now editing books four and five, which is quite a task!  But worthwhile...