And The Story Continues…

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Our hound asked another multi-pronged question for this week: “Do you enjoy reading SERIES fiction? Is there a “magic” number of titles in that series that you find most agreeable? Moreover, do you WRITE series fiction? How many titles do YOU plan in your series?”

I’ll take the questions in the order asked. Yes, I definitely enjoy reading series fiction. When I get invested in characters, I like to know what happens after the story ends. Often, a series will give you a glimpse of the main characters in the subsequent books, as well as their conflicts. 

I don’t believe there’s a magic number of books in a series. I think a series should have at least three, but if you’ve been following my review posts, I’m currently enjoying series that number more than thirty. As long as the quality of the writing is there, and the characters show personal growth, I’ll keep reading. 

Yes, I write series fiction. How many do I plan? I don’t. My Partridge series has six books: The Partridge and the Peartree, Two Tutor Doves, Three French Inns, Four Calling Bards, and Five Gold Rings, as well as a non-holiday book called Love’s Refrain. Five seemed like a good number to stop, especially when considering the fifth verse of the song “Twelve Days of Christmas” has that triumphant melody for “Five Golden Rings.”  Two books I co-wrote with Stephanie Michels about a quilting group were the start of what was planned as a multi-book series called The Stitching Post, but subsequent books weren’t completed, and The Calico Heart and The Friendship Star Quilt are now homeless following the closing of Clean Reads publishing. Another homeless series is my contemporary Christmas series set in fictional Zutphen, Michigan – two books (Christmas Wishes and Christmas Journey) were completed and published, and two more languish in files on my laptop.

There are times when circumstances dictate how many books there should be. I’m currently working on a sequel to The Samurai’s Garden, and my thought was to have a book about each generation of the Tanaka family up to current times. If I follow through with this plan, that will be about five or six books total. After I released Searching for Lady Luck (my historical novella set during the Great Depression), I outlined stories featuring Charlie Brannigan’s sister Katie and brother Connor. Three siblings, three books. And then there’s a cozy mystery series I have on the back burner about a musician working with her community’s theater group. One title involves a soprano, another features an alto, the third a tenor, and then a bass. Four voice categories translates to four books, unless I include the mezzos and other in-betweens, the crew, the pit orchestra, etc. As you can see, I’m going to need to start working hard to complete all these series in my head!

What series have you read lately? Do you have a preferred number of episodes in a series? 

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