Just a couple more dry days and the outside of my house will be painted. Hooray! That will bring me another step closer to my dream of living on acreage with my pack of doggies and without house projects to do so I can write!
The St. Patrick's Day release from the Rogue's Angels is in the critique phase, so I'm back to working on my nine-book family saga series. This is one of those projects that has so captured my attention that I could easily work on it from the time I get up in the morning until I fall asleep at the computer in the wee hours of the next morning.
Vision boards for each story fill one of the walls in my office. Detail sheets for each scene in every book are tucked into folders. Spreadsheets chronicle each major event and when it happens. And drafts of the stories themselves are growing each day.
You can probably tell that I'm a detailed plotter. Many of my writer friends are "pantsters"--they just sit down and write wherever the story leads them. Some authors even say if they outline, it ruins the story because they already know what will happen. However, I find that my characters still surprise me, even with all the outlining I do. It's fascinating that writers follow many different creative processes to tell wonderful stories!
Because there are overlapping events in this series, but told from different points of view, tracking what happens in each story is critical so I don't make faux pas like having a heroine pregnant in one scene and the child going to school three months later.
I'm also excited to venture into the video end of promotion with this series. I'm planning book trailers as I write, and hope to have graphics of key scenes to go along with the text of the books.
I'm curious what you as readers think. Do you like books that are part of a series, with characters whose lives continue from book to book? (You get to experience them living their "happily ever after.") Are you intrigued by a combination of book and movie, where you can watch key scenes from the book if you want to do more than read those scenes?
Let me know what you think!
-Amber Angel
As you probably can tell from the books I write, I LOVE series books. Books that are related but stand alone always capture my attention. It always seems certain characters stand out in each book and I want to learn of their story. I can hardly wait until these characters in your series come alive.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Allana!
ReplyDeleteThat's exactly what happened with my series. I drafted one book and the other characters absolutely had to have their stories told also. :)
-Amber Angel