ELIZABETH ASKS: TO SERIES OR NOT TO SERIES?

Most of the time I didn't set out to write—or not to write—series. I simply told the stories as they came to me.

When I wrote mysteries with Evan as A. E. Maxwell, we knew from the get-go that it would be a PI series featuring a guy called Fiddler. We wrote eight books for two or three different publishers (hard to say, because one pub swallowed another and/or branched into a third, carrying us along with the debris). Our audience was loyal and too small to make a living on. That was fine as long as Evan had a day job and I wrote science fiction books (lots of fun, miserable pay).

The FIRE DANCER series was born. I could have written a lot of them. I wrote only three.

Why?

When Evan quit his day job, life got interesting. The end result was that after eight years, we stopped writing Fiddler and Fiora mysteries. The fans wanted more. They still want more.

Ditto the science fiction fans.

But I simply couldn't afford to do more in either genre. There were bills to pay, kids to feed and educate, mortgages, cars, the whole catastrophe. I could make much more money for my investment of time writing romances.

And I loved romances with all the fervor of a recent convert. (Thanks, Jayne!)

When I started writing romances, I wrote unconnected books. At first, anyway. Every so often a side character would grab me and I'd write about that character in a different book. Then I wrote four inter-related stories. Didn't mean to. It just happened that way. The MacKenzie-Blackthorn books (Fire and Rain, Outlaw, Granite Man, Warrior) simply grew, one out of the other. Yes, I planned to do Utah’s story…but the publisher and I parted company for reasons too complex to go into here.

Bye-bye Utah. And yes, I still get requests for Utah’s story.

Frequently.


Then Evan and I started the Risk, Ltd. series under the name of Ann Maxwell. THE RUBY/now WHIRLPOOL, and SILK AND SHADOW were written against the Risk Ltd. backdrop. Then I found out I'd bitten off more than I could chew in terms of contracts. I had been working hard. Too hard, I guess. My doctor told me to cut back or crash.

No more Risk Ltd. books.

So now I was down to 2-3 full length historical romances a year for Avon. The ONLY series was a great success, surprising everyone when the third book went on the New York Times list. So, naturally, my publisher wants more, right?

Wrong.

My publisher was planning to more than double my print run on my fourth book. In order to sell that many copies into a resistant marketplace (remember, this was before Only You went on the NYT list), you have to have a sales “hook.” No same old same old will do.


The medieval series was born, one at a time, not as a planned unit. UNTAMED, FORBIDDEN, ENCHANTED. The readers were loyal, but the marketplace itself was beginning The Great Decline of mass market paperbacks, a process that is still ongoing.

No one knew this at the time, of course. The publisher asked me if I'd mind going back to westerns, maybe my audience wanted them more. I didn't mind—hell, I loved westerns. Always wanted to write them.

Bye-bye medievals, back to westerns.

So I wrote another Only, then took some side characters from that book for AUTUMN LOVER and WINTER FIRE.

Publishers change, people are fired or quit, news ideas come…and Avon decided to publish hardcovers under the Avon imprint. Again, there is this pesky marketing problem. How do you make a mass market paperback romance author look “important” enough to justify a hardcover price? (Remember, this was before NY really believed that down-market romances could sell in the up-market hardcover market.)

My publisher asked me if there was any other area of romance that I'd like to explore.

Oh, yeah. There sure as hell was. I'd been trying to sell romantic suspense for YEARS. (Remember, Jayne?) So it was decided that my “breakout” book would be romantic suspense, not western.


Except the timing was wrong. WINTER FIRE came out in hardcover and went on the New York Times. Yes, my publisher was surprised. But by that time, I'd already written AMBER BEACH and was well into JADE ISLAND. I was committed to romantic suspense and was loving it. I was also loving the Donovans. I did two more--PEARL COVE and MIDNIGHT IN RUBY BAYOU.

Don't know if you read my blog two weeks ago. Let’s just say that the covers for the Donovan books were a freakin’ disaster. Again, publishers were going in all directions trying to make the covers of hardback romances of all kinds appear more up-market. The “look” for romantic suspense hadn't yet gelled. I was unlucky to come out on the wrong end of the packaging game. Nothing personal, and certainly nothing intended. My publisher was doing the best it could with the knowledge at hand.

Bye-bye Donovans.

Enter MOVING TARGET—and Rarities Unlimited, a new backdrop for a new series. RUNNING SCARED and DIE IN PLAIN SIGHT were also Rarities books, with some side characters from the Donovan books snuck in.

My publisher really, really, really prefers one-offs; that is, totally unrelated books. As long as I could continue to do the kind of hard-edged romantic suspense I loved, I didn't care enough to fight to the death over the series question with my publisher.

So bye-bye Rarities Unlimited.

Enter THE COLOR OF DEATH.

Enter ALWAYS TIME TO DIE.

Except in the latter book, something called St. Kilda Consulting appeared—an international, private troubleshooting group for all those nasty transnational criminals the collapse of the Soviet Union caused. So many truly awful, and awfully fascinating, transnational crimes to understand. The more I researched, the more I realized that what we get in the headlines and six-second sound bites isn't even the tip of the international iceberg. It's hardly even the shine off the tip.

Oops. Here was another backdrop I wanted—needed—to explore with more books. THE WRONG HOSTAGE further expanded St. Kilda Consulting. Ditto INNOCENT AS SIN. Ditto BLUE SMOKE AND MURDER, the book I'm working on now.

Will all future books be St. Kilda Consulting books?

Wish I knew. Part of the answer depends on my publisher’s patience. Most depends on how long St. Kilda continues to fascinate me.

What I do know is that life isn't linear.

Series fiction is.

And you can't go home again.


My question for you is: If I could add onto any of my previous series, which one would you prefer? Or do you just want a good read, series or no?


P. S. I'm vanishing into the interior mountain west for a week. I'll comment on your comments when/if I hit a WiFi hookup, or when I get back, whichever comes first. Until then, enjoy what you have...this isn't a dress rehearsal!