This my October post for monthly support group sponsored by The Indelibles, called Indie Life. We get to post anything we want in support of other independent authors.I Am TRAVELING
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Yup, still on the road. We left from TN on our Route 66 adventure on September 7th and we finished in Santa Monica, CA on October 7th. What a wild trip it's been. We are now relaxing in Las Vegas until Friday when we will head eastward for home.
I managed to get the Amazon version of the second book in my Klondike Mystery series, "Barely a Spark", published before we left and it's now getting formatted for the print version as well. I haven't decided if I will publish it on Smashwords or not...
This was my first series and I found it hard to not put in spoilers from the first book, something I hadn't considered until a friend read the first few chapters and pointed that out to me. I had to go back and make some big changes but it made the rest of the book easier to write with that in mind.
One thing I hadn't anticipated - how hard it was to feel as excited about what I was writing as I had during the first book. Not sure what the difference was. I knew people would love the first book and they did. I wasn't so sure about the second book. Was it moving fast enough? Was there enough mystery? Would the new characters add or take away from the story?
If I ever write another series I will be very cautious about continuing one book into a second. It's one thing to leave a cliff-hanger (I did in book two), but you need to be sure the current story is DONE.
Do you write or plan to write a series? What's been your biggest fear?
I'm not sure what you mean about spoilers for the second novel? You mean talking about what happened in the first novel in the second one? Or do you mean in the blurb?
ReplyDeleteI just released the second book in my series last month, and am really enjoying having two books out! I think it helped that I had a lot of the second book written before the first was published though, so I was mostly just polishing. I'm planning on writing the third one this November (for NaNoWriMo), so hopefully it won't be too hard. Starting from scratch again is a bit nervewracking!
I'm writing what will be a series, though I want each book in it to be a complete novel with loose ends pretty well tied up. I do think that in series that are more like one big novel--- like Lord of the Rings---- it is perfectly fine to post 'spoilers' in book 2 about what happened in book 1--- though perhaps one should wait until after the first few chapters that are often available in a free sample on the book selling sites. And in any series one can't completely avoid mentioning what went on before, especially any events that changed things for a major character.
ReplyDeleteI just finished my current series of 3 books and one novella and I made sure that even though the books should be read in order, each story was a complete story in and of itself. No cliffhangers in the middle of the climax. They could be read out of order, just an appreciation for the history would be missing. :)
ReplyDelete