Writing in a series, and finding a good surprise

 Writing in a series has at least one basic difference from writing a standalone:starting with book 2, you have to allow for the reader not having read book 1 in a while, or even never having read book 1 at all. Therefore, you may need to explain things from time to time. The tricky part is, you don't want to bore the reader who has read book 1 recently (or who read it a while ago, but has an excellent memory). If a story keeps telling the reader things he already knows, he will get bored with it. It's basically a balancing act between  the need to move the story forward and the need to make the reader understand what's happening and why.

Another big difference is, in a series you can follow one character for years, if you can keep coming up with interesting things for them to do. That's a real plus if you have a character you want to grow and change with time.

Readers who fall in love with one or more characters tend to love reading a whole series about them. This can be a problem for the writer, who wants to move on. Personally, I've never sat down to write a book that hadn't already sprung  to life in my head. My first published work is 2-book series set on the panet Haven , I have another 2-book series (not yet published but coming soon) called the Nameless World series. They are very different in the way there were written. I thought of the Haven books as two stories while I was writing them; there is a nine year gap between the two books, for one thing, and characters who were secondary in book 1 come front and center in book 2 for another.  Ergo, I ended book 1 before I moved on to write book 2.

The Haven Series

The Nameless World books were written as one story but it was so damn long (240,000 words!)  that I eventually decided I had to cut it into two books. I found a place where a few months elapsed, and added a little additional text to give the book some resolution, I  made that the end of book 1. I also had to add some text to the start of book 2, and I had to edit the rest of the m.s. carefully to allow for the non-reader of book 1 (see first para in this post).

Cover at for Nameless World, Books 1 and 2

My three-book series set on the planet Wakanreo was kind of an amalgam of the other two series. I saw it as two books, one about the relationship between a human woman and a Wakanrean man, and another one about their children. However, on writing it, the "second book" turned into books 2 and 3. 

The Wakanreo series

I usually end a series because I have no more story in my head for that setting and those characters. That's not a problem until readers express a desire for more books in that series. This has happened more than once with the Wakanreo books in particular. I remembered starting  a fourth book, but as I recalled, it was only a few chapters, more of a short story than a novel. I published Alien Bonds in 2018, but I wrote the first draft more than 20 years ago, using a DOS-based software called XyWrite. I went looking for those few chapters and discovered to my surprise that the file was actually 56,000 words, nine and a half chapters! Luckily, I had transferred it into MS Word so I could read it. 

Now I have to decide if I want to return to Wakanreo with a book 4. But first I have to remember how I planned for the book to end! 

The Haven books are now available in paperback!

 My first two published novels, The Sixth Discipline and its direct sequel No Safe Haven are now for sale as paperbacks.  Here are the new covers:

For some reason, Amazon put  The Sixth Discipline on sale for $11.99 even though the regular price is $14.99 If you have any interest in the paperback, get it ow befor the change their minds. 

My books are like my babies

I was the third of four children, and when my mom got stressed and wanted to yell at one of us, she would often yell all our names instead of just the one who was about to do something bad or dangerous. Sometimes she even threw in the dog's name.

I thought of this the other day when I recalled writing a specific situation, and then I couldn't remember which of my books had that scene in it. All my titles repeated in my head, one after the other, and it came to me that in some ways, they are my children.

If you think about it, a story idea formed in my head and was made fertile by something in my life, either personal experience, or something I had read, or even just my imagination. The idea developed and took form, much like a fetus, until it had a life of its own. I could send it out into the world without me. But unlike people, books don't always have the same gestation period. Some might take nine months, but some might take nine years. 

About 25 years ago, I started writing seriously. Before that, I had dabbled in writing. I had started a book, which I later called Child of the Sand (still not published) but I hadn't finished it. Then somehow the beginning scene for The Sixth Discipline popped into my head. A man with a bow and arrow was walking through a forest. He had a premonition of danger and then he was shot (not fatally) and kidnapped. That was it, to start with. I sat down and started writing (I have never been an outliner; I am a classic pantser) and six week later I had a first draft. In actual fact, that first draft became two books, since it was too long for one. The working title had been Haven but that became the series name for the two-book series, The Sixth Discipline and No Safe Haven. It was the fastest I ever wrote a first draft.

But in the way of things, both books sat there and germinated a while. I always wrote whatever floated to the top of my brain, to take advantage of the energy that a story has when it's newly formed. I had a day job, a helpful husband and two wonderful kids, but I always made time to write in the evenings. I eventually joined a writers' critique group, and I took a writing class, both of which I found helpful. But in writing, I have found nothing more helpful than the actual doing of it. Getting feedback is 100% essential, but it's not how you start. You start by doing it.

And if you're lucky, you give birth to one or more stories. 

BookBub promotion: second wave of numbers

The one drawback to using Smashwords as a portal to other retailers (iBooks store and the Nook store are my biggest non-Kindle markets, but they also cover Sony and Kobo, and a few others) is that it takes a while to get the sales numbers back. Smashwords just recently updated the May numbers both Apple iBooks and Barnes & Noble Nook sales reports. When it came to giveaways, Nook was a winner, at least for me. I gave away over 4,000 Nook copies of The Sixth Discipline! That doesn't compare to the 15,000 copies I gave away in May on the Kindle, but it's still a lot more books than I ever gave away before on any other non-Kindle platform. Sales figures for No Safe Haven, the sequel to the free book, were pretty good for the Nook, but about 20% higher for Apple. I wish I had some giveaways stats for iBooks, but it seems like Apple no longer bothers to report “sales” for free books, so I don't have much to go on in comparing, but since the Kindle and Nook giveaway-to-sales ratios are very similar, I think I probably gave away about 5,000 iBooks copies. Since I don't know for sure, I will go with Nook as the giveaway winner.

Update on my books

So, here is where we are in Buxton World:

King of Trees is now on iBooks as well as Kindle and Nook.

The Nostalgia Gambit is still not on iBooks! I don't know why, since KoT made it onto that platform in days, but TNG is still not there after two months.

The Sixth Discipline had a fantastic month! Thanks to the Bookbub promotion, it has already topped 15,000 (free) copies in May, and that's on Kindle alone. It's also now free in the UK and Canadian Kindle stores.  The sequel No Safe Haven is selling well in consequence.

Lastly, my science fiction romance (working title is now Saronna's Gift) is back from being critiqued by my writers group, and is now undergoing some revisions.  I'm still aiming for a late summer release.

Writing in a series: why I created my own universe

I got a wonderful email the other day, from a reader who was requesting the free story I offer via this blog. It was the kind of email authors dream about because she said she had read The Sixth Discipline (which she got free in iBooks, but it's also free almost everywhere) and loved it enough to buy the sequel No Safe Haven, and loved it enough to buy all my other books in the iBooks store. On top of that, when I checked, she had left a review on iBooks! Talk about your ideal readers!

When I sent her the story, I suggested she read Tribes first, because it's most like the Haven books in overall tone, and I warned her that Shades of Empire is noticeably darker and more explicit than my other books. But when I was writing the email, it occurred to me that in some ways, the fact that she loved the Haven books so much could make it difficult for her to enjoy the other books.

Readers love books in a series. Once they find a character they like, they want to stick with him or her. When a local book club read my fantasy novella Where Magic Rules, one of the questions the readers asked me was did I have any books in a series.

Authors, on the other hand, often find it difficult keep finding new things to say about a character. The Haven “series” is only two books long, and I didn't know it would be two when I started it. As it turned out, I had too much story in my head for it to fit into one book. Fortunately, there was an eight-year gap in the story, which made a logical place to end the first book; I just had to be sure there was enough resolution of all but the one significant plot point that continues in the second book.

But in a sense, most of my books are in a series. All of my far future science fiction stories take place in a universe in which people from earth colonized other worlds in a way that left them cut off from our earth. The societies and cultures they created varied, depending on why they left their own world. I call them "sleeper worlds," partly because the colonists traveled in suspended animation. In the Haven books, there were three distinct groups on the colony world of Haven: one looking for new resources, one wanting isolation to experience harmony with nature, and one hoping for a total lack of government. In Tribes, the world was a prison colony, and its culture and government evolved from prison gangs. The colony world in The Nostalgia Gambit is an exception in that it's not a sleeper world.

I named my universe the ThreeCon universe, for the Third Confederation of Planets, the organization I created to oversee commerce and other interaction between the worlds. Although there are no characters shared between stories (except for the Haven books), the universe has a consistent, shared history. There are events mentioned in one that carry over into other stories, too.

My next book, most likely titled Saronna's Gift will be a romance, but it's also set in the ThreeCon universe, and the sleeper world the story takes place on was founded as religious colony by a charismatic but despotic leader who believed in an Old Testament-style patriarchy. After a few centuries of isolation, the world is a pretty awful place, in a lot of ways. The story starts when a young woman's father takes her to a city to sell her. I'm hoping the book will appeal to both romance readers and science fiction readers.

Really, my kind of series is the kind authors like: low overhead for the writer in creating the overall history, and a new set of characters each time. I don't know how much benefit that is to readers. If you have an opinion, let me know in the comments.

Did Smashwords update all the big retailers at once?

I haven't been checking sales reports on Smashwords lately, so I don't know if they did them all on one day or three days in a row, but there are now new sales reported for Sony, Apple iBooks, and Barnes & Noble. I did best on iBooks as usual, with Barnes & Noble next and Sony last.

As on Amazon. No Safe Haven is selling the best, but Shades of Empire isn't that far behind it. Also, I have more sales in the US than anywhere else. I wish I knew how The Sixth Discipline (free book!) was doing on all those platforms but B&N is the only one that lists numbers for free books (except maybe Sony, and I haven't got a free book with them yet).

Would it kill you to post a review?

There has a been a huge kerfuffle on the web lately about online book reviews. The New York Times had a story about a man who created a pay-for-reviews service that was blatantly not providing honest reviews.  That article mentioned mostly self-published authors, but there has also been some fuss about traditionally published authors creating fake online personas, not only to praise their own works but to trash other writers' books!

Let me just say that if I were going to pay for reviews or create my own, I would have many more! Getting bloggers to write reviews is not easy, and apparently not that many readers think to go online and write reviews when they finish a book. Supposedly, reviews are what sells books. Certainly, best sellers have lots of reviews (usually hundreds). But when you look at my books' Amazon rankings, what stands out is that my best seller (not counting the free book) is No Safe Haven, which has one and only one review.

Of course, that's disingenuous. NSH is selling better than my others because it's a direct sequel to The Sixth Discipline, which is free. I'm basically a book pusher. "Sure, kid, have some! It'll make you feel good, and it's free."  Of course, the next hit costs $2.99.  People are buying the second one, but they're not reviewing it!

Interestingly, I have the most reviews (nine!) for The Sixth Discipline. Perhaps people who get it for free feel somehow obligated to post a review? Although, actually, not all nine reviewers got the book for free, but more did than didn't because I gave away some review copies even before Amazon made it free.

I wonder if the fuss about bogus reviews will devalue them on Amazon? And I wonder why some people post reviews and some don't? If anyone out there feels like answering, let me know what makes you post reviews, or why you don't post them. You can leave a comment or send me an email at my address on the Contact tab.

Or don't you want to do that either?

Another nice review for No Safe Haven

Over on the SFBooks review blog, reviewer Anthony gave No Safe Haven 3 stars.  He noted the multi-threaded plot, and the emphasis on family, and he liked the ending.

Be sure to check out SFBooks! Anthony does a wonderful job presenting information.  His indexes by genre are really nice and they even show the book covers.  He reviews traditionally published books along with self published books, and indexes not only by genre and title but by author and publisher.

Addendum: The Ides of October sale has come and gone, and No Safe Haven is now back up to $2.99. The price change should kick in momentarily on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Smashwords.

A nice review for No Safe Haven

So far all my reviews have been for The Sixth Discipline, but since the Books and Things reviewer showed an interest  I sent him the sequel, and he has posted this lovely review of No Safe Haven.

Here's a quote I copied to the Amazon page for the book:

“The suspense, political intrigue and excitement around this plotline had me unable to put the book down for very long. The other plotlines were enjoyable as well and I was specifically happy to see that the major open plotline from the first book was closed down to a rather satisfactory ending.”

I'm so happy he liked it!