Productivity and Thoughts on Series

I’m supposed to go back to work and be a productive member of society today.  I’m feeling much better, thanks.  After five days of fabulous sleep, 6:30 royally sucked this morning, but no matter.  It’s only 2 days until the weekend.  It is, of course, raining buckets this morning, with lots of grumbly thunder that’s prompted Daisy to curl up at my feet in a “Save me, mom” posture.  Callie is sacked out on two full couch cushions without a care in the world.  I can’t bring myself to rush in, so I’m taking my time with tea and waiting for a lull so I can get into my car without drowning.

I had a marvelously productive writing day yesterday.  In a two hour span, I churned out 1475 words on a new scene in the novella.  The first hundred were an addition to the original scene before I decided to scrap it and rewrite it from the heroine’s perspective.  I am continually amazed how that simple change can invigorate an otherwise meh scene.  I had a new character introduced who I don’t think is going to be content to appear in just that scene, so I need to do some rewriting of a couple of other scenes to incorporate him.  Which isn’t a bad thing, as I can use him as a vehicle to explain a few things without coming across as an As You Know Bob.  And I think Mick (that would be Micajah Guidry, the Cajun Wylk bartender who showed up to be Gage’s best friend) is going to have to have his own story at some point.  He’ll have to be patient though.  I’ve got a lot of other stuff in the pipeline ahead of him.

I read an interesting post over at Deadline Dames by Rachel Vincent this morning in response to someone asking

When you all write your series, do you only continue to write them under contract? Or do you plot out an entire say 6-book series regardless of whether it sells? I’m working on a series myself, but I just wonder if I should attempt to sell the first novel first before I complete the rest of the (7!) novels.

Rachel offers up some great advice that sums up to, no, don’t write all seven books before you start querying because what if they don’t sell?  Makes sense.  It’s kind of why I have multiple projects on the brain–since I DON’T have any idea what story I will manage to sell first or at all.  The novella and HiS are both in the same universe.  I’m making Totem, the YA trilogy a part of it as well, but not in a series kind of way.  And I’ve still got the Mississippi based romantic suspense floating around in my head at some point.  And the culinary paranormals–which are, by the way, the only classic style series featuring the same character as heroine through multiple books.  My paranormal romance stuff all fits in the same universe, but each is a stand alone book that can be read out of order without too much damage.  There’s some metaplot that flows through all of them (or will be), but if a different book than HiS is what sells, I won’t have lost too much.  Not that I don’t want HiS to sell since it looks very much like I’ll have two years invested in it (minimum), but I feel like I’ve learned a great deal from this book, so it wasn’t an execise in futility.

Okay, I can no longer hear the rain beating on the roof.  I should finish getting ready for work and scoot before it comes back.

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