Carlene's Blog

Okay, enough about my wonderful new life in Coos Bay, Oregon. I originally decided to start a blog to help other writers, to get dialogs going and to exchange ideas. So, with that in mind, I’m getting back to talking about writing.

When you decide to write a novel, there is one important question you need to ask yourself. Is this going to be a stand alone book or the beginning of a series? It makes a difference because if you’re planning a series, you might have some characters you’ll want to continue on with in the next book or books, so you might not want to reveal everything about him or her. All my books have been stand-alone novels but…I’ve left the door open to continue if I want to. For instance check out the blurb for my humorous novel, FINDER at http://deejulian.jimdo.com/blurb-party/ The book is complete as it is but if I ever feel like it, I can involve Sissy in another adventure. I have notes and ideas but haven’t gotten around to writing the book yet. Same thing with ROMAN CIRCUS, my humorous romantic suspense novel. Harmony Jane Jones runs away and joins the circus, has lots of fun and sometimes scary adventures and falls in love, so the story is complete, but once again, I’ve left the door open to continue on and make a series with Harmony, Sam and Midnight the Wonder dog as main characters. For into on ROMAN CIRCUS go to www.nobleromance.com

Why does it make a difference? Because series books are easier to sell. Agents and editors don’t buy books, they buy careers, so if you can go to them with ideas for a series and some basic outlines, you’ll be miles ahead. Besides, once you create the main characters, all you have to do is put them into different situations. Silly me – I have to create whole new worlds every time I write a book! Oh, well, that’s my process and what works for me, so for now, I’ll just keep writing a new book every year!

I’d love to get other’s opinions – what do you think?

Tags: The Writing Life - book blurbs - writing a series - stand alone books

This entry was posted on Monday, July 19th, 2010 at 10:24 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.