It happened again… I thought I was pretty solid in my ideas and my plan for my books… but then I got a new idea… Really, another one?
After I wrote my first full book, Not Alone, I decided that it would be the first book in a series. Immediately I knew the series would be three books. I had three characters that needed their stories to be told. It took me a few years to get to writing the third book. I had a baby and my brain turns to mush when I’m pregnant, so writing took a backseat for a while. But when E was a little over a year old I was finally able to fully jump back in the saddle and start writing again (I had been doing some heavy duty editing of book one). But as I started flushing out what I was going to write in book three another idea came to me.
Where’d the idea come from?
I got a simple idea, a “what if a character ____?” And it morphed from there. I woke up on a Saturday morning with this question poking my brain and by the end of the day I knew my characters and had a basic plot line. One day! It doesn’t normally happen that fast. But for book four it did. And I say with complete confidence that this is a story that God wants told. Initially I thought it would be a stand alone story or potentially a new series, but nope, it fit into my Detectives of Hazel Hill series.
Okay, so this series I thought would be three books was now four. Fine.
I finished writing the first draft of book three and then started plotting out book four more thoroughly. Spent a good chunk of time working on that in between homeschooling and the rest of life and started really writing it back in November. I wrote this book more slowly than past ones, probably because I’m way busier now with two kids homeschooling and participating in a co-op this year. But it’s nearly done five months later. It’s been a tough story to write too as the topic is a little more intense. It has also required a bit more research than the first three books did. Oh, and I’ve been getting my blog off the ground, that takes time too.
But as I’m reaching the end I’m thinking about the epilogue. When does it take place? Is this the last book in the series? If it is I should set the epilogue out a bit further and give you, my readers, a glimpse into their future lives.
But… then I had a thought… Uh-oh! 😉
Near the end of book four I needed a specific perspective for part of the story, so I wrote a scene in another character’s point of view… a character who had been in all the books, but hadn’t had his story told yet…
I chatted with my mom about my dilemma of whether or not to leave the series open for new stories or to close it.
Then she said it.
“You know we don’t know the Captain’s story.”
“You’re kidding right?”
She looked at me weird. “Exactly who you were thinking, huh?”
“Yep!”
Well, I decided to stew over it. And three weeks later I have a developing idea. Ha! Guess this series is going to be five books long. For now!