Finish What You Started

When I first started writing, all of my stories were stand alone novels. It never occurred to me to write a series. As a reader, I also don't recall reading a lot of serials growing up. I can think of a few, but I'm not going to tell you what they are so you don't realize how old I am!

A few years ago, I took my first young adult novel to Wattpad. Like You Mean It was a stand alone young adult novel about a popular teen who loses his arm in a car accident and has to learn to navigate life and relationships.

It never occurred to me to make the book a series. Not until I took it to Wattpad. As soon as the last chapter was posted, I was inundated with readers' requests for more of those characters. Not quite sure what else to do with Danni and Darren, I decided a spin off story for Darren's brother was in order. That series spawned two more series. Each set of books introduced new characters that readers wanted more of so I responded to the call of the readers as well as my muse.

Now, it's pretty common for books to be part of a series. Most of us not only expect it, we look forward to it. The more books there are, the more emotionally invested in the characters we are. I don't know about you, but every time a new book in a series comes out, I brush up on the story line by rereading all of the preceding books.

I love when books are in a series. You know what I don't love? Actually, I guess there are two things I don't love when it comes to a book series. The first isn't as offensive to me as the second.

First, I can't stand it when a writer starts a series and puts huge gaps in between the release dates of the books. The days of waiting a year for the next book in a series died when Harry Potter finally defeated Voldemort. I'm not saying I want a book a month, though it's nice. I just don't want to wait months and months between the book releases. Not without a good reason. Of course, there is one exception to this. If the book series is long, say ten or twelve books, it may take a couple of years to get from book one to twelve. That's okay, but taking two years to get from book one to book two because the author lost her inspiration? That's just wrong!

The second thing I can't stand, and I mean I hate it with a purple passion, is when a writer starts a series and never freaking finishes it. There are one or two or maybe even three awesome books with more promised only nothing more ever comes. Any number of things can be to blame: the book didn't sell as well as expected so the publisher doesn't want any more of the series, the author loses her inspiration, the author gets a better idea and shoves the original series to the side and so on.

Authors, if you want to work on more than one series at a time, that's okay. As a reader, the more I can get from my favorite authors, the happier I am. I just have one request. If you start a series, and you tell readers it's going to be a series, please, please finish what you started; especially if you ended the last book on a damn cliffhanger.