Jayne Contemplates the Dark Side of a Series

Reading or writing a series is a seductive endeavor. Trust me, I know; I've tried it from both sides.

I remember falling headfirst into a number of series when I was a kid: the Walter Farley horse books and Nancy Drew, for example. Later in high school I moved into Andre Norton's Witch World and Anne McCaffrey's Dragonriders of Pern series. Still later came Robert B Parker's "Spenser" novels and associated spin-offs and, of course, anything by Dick Francis that involved horses. (Important aside here for Francis fans: at long last, he's got a new one coming out! The title is UNDER ORDERS. It will be in stores at the end of September and it features -yes!- his wonderful character, Sid Halley!)

Ahem, where was I? Oh, yes. The lure of a series, I think, is that it takes both the reader and the writer back to a familiar world where we know the landscape and the people. This is a place we have visited before and where we had a great time. We are eager to catch up on what is happening there now.

But there is a dark side to writing a series -- just ask any writer who has ever created one. The really scary aspect of a series from an author's point of view is that he or she can get trapped in it and never be able to escape. In many cases, once readers have discovered a particular series, that is the only world they want from that author. That can sometimes drive writers mad. Why do you think Sir Arthur Conan Doyle tried to kill off his Sherlock Holmes character?

I ponder these issues because I am launching a series, myself. Not just a series within one of my three worlds but one that will crossover between my Amanda Quick historicals and my Jayne Ann Krentz contemporaries. Heck, it even makes a brief, cameo appearance in the next Jayne Castle story. The keystone of the stories is a mysterious group devoted to psychic/paranormal research called the Arcane Society. The launch book, SECOND SIGHT, is out now under my Amanda Quick name. The next volume in the series, WHITE LIES, under my JAK name, will debut in January. I am writing the third as we speak.

There are a couple of other risks in writing a series. Some readers who discover it after it is up and running will refuse to try the books because they don't want to come into it "in the middle", so to speak. They are afraid they will have already missed too much and they don't want to have to go back and start at the beginning. I will make sure that each book in my series stands alone but that doesn't mean I won't lose some potential readers because of the perception that the books need to be read in order.

And then there is the very real possibility that I will lose readers who simply don't like the series. For that reason I will continue to write some books that are not Arcane Society novels under all my names.

But the truth is, I'm really hoping this Arcane Society series works because it brings together all of the elements that I love to work with: romance, suspense and a psychic twist. I can't imagine anything I'd rather write. I won't mind getting trapped in this series, honest! I'm as excited about the Arcane Society novels as I was when I came across a new Walter Farley or Nancy Drew when I was a kid.

What about you? Are you faithful to a series or two? Have you ever quit a series cold-turkey? Have you ever refused to read an author because you didn't want to start in the middle of a series?