The Joy of Writing a Series

The third book in my Hood River Valley Mystery/Thriller Series is coming out soon. Her Last Breath is about a serial killer who has targeted my detective’s ex-husband, the sheriff. Here is the blurb:

Game on, Sheriff!

Detective Liz Ellisen is ready to walk away. After closing the most grueling case of her career, her resignation letter to Sheriff Mitchell Ellisen—her husband of twenty-five years and soon-to-be-ex—sits unfinished on her desk.

Then the call comes.

A young woman’s body is discovered in an abandoned barn. Staged to look like suicide, but Liz knows better. This is murder—calculated, methodical, and just the beginning.

In the barn’s dusty loft, an old Army trunk holds grim secrets; women’s pelvic bones, yellowed with age. As more young women vanish, taunting messages directed at the Sheriff begin to surface.

While racing to find the missing women, Liz battles demons on all sides—her failed marriage, her birth mother’s sudden reappearance, and the mounting evidence that points to an unthinkable suspect.

The clock is ticking, the body count rising and the killer’s game escalating.

Liz can only wonder why the Sheriff is being targeted by a killer…or is he the killer?

I’m excited to get the reaction to this book from my readers. Will they like the direction I’m taking the series? Will they continue to want more stories about these characters?

With this third book, I’m finding joy in writing a series character. I’ve found that with every book I learn more about my characters. I’ve become more engaged in their lives. I want to know what will happen next. And I hope my readers feel the same way.

My first published book was a standalone. Lots of people asked if I planned to write more books about the characters. Although I was happy that they wanted more, I felt it was one and done. I told the story, and it was finished. In my mind I didn’t need to write another book about these characters.

Then I decided to write a series. I’m finding that along with all of the fun things in doing a series, there are also issues. Keeping true to each character. Keeping them interesting and the story fresh. Remembering names and dates is a challenge and I’ve found myself messing up sometimes.

I took an online class from Deborah Crombie who writes the amazing Duncan Kincaid/Gemma James series. She said that one of the most important things you should do when writing a series is to keep a series bible. List everything about the characters that you can think of because you will need that information at some point.

I don’t know how many times I’ve had to go back to that bible and look for the name of a character who had a small part in the story. Or the name of a street where something happened. I tripped myself up by changing my detective’s parent’s names. Her father started out as Joel Scott, which I changed to George Scott, then discovered while writing the third book that I’d changed his name back to Joel! Needless to say, I had to do ‘search and find’ and change his name to George because that’s what I used in the published books. And I had changed her mother’s name from Melanie to Missy and had to change it back. It’s a very good thing that I caught both name changes and that I had written the correct names in my bible.

While the characters with small parts don’t seem that important, you never know when they will take on a larger role in a story somewhere down the road. So, it’s very important to get their names right. I’ve also had my first readers find eye color changes, and my characters being in a room and a scene or two later coming out of a different room. I’m so thankful for first readers!

I’ve been busy editing the new book, and now that it’s in the hands of my editors, I’m beginning a new standalone. I’m excited to write this book, which is something very different than what I’ve done so far. But I also find that I’m anxious to get back to my series and see what my characters are up to next. I touched on human trafficking in My Sister’s Keeper, the first book in this series, but book four will go deeper into the topic. I’m so excited to start writing it and I hope I do it justice.