Series, and Why I Like to Write Them

This originally appeared as part of EM Lynley's Backlist Strikes Back.


I love series, it’s no secret. I love them in books, movies and television. Long ago and far away, when I started writing, it came as no surprise to me that my writing default was set to creating a series.

The first book of my Sentries series, Marked Yours, was published by Dreamspinner Press May 2011. Book two, Together Bound, was also published by Dreamspinner Press in October of 2011. The third book, Chained Hearts, comes out June 8, 2012.

I have six books in all planned, but I digress, so let me get to the part where I gush about the virtues of the series.

Marked Yours starts three hundred years in our future. This isn’t the Star Trek version of the future that is all high techy. There are horses not cars, solar panels for power and steam engine trains instead of airplanes. The life and world I created is different, but not at all bleak. Society has changed, not necessarily for better or worse, but it is different.

A meeting of past and future is fun and challenging. I created my future world, but not without doing my research. Mainly I concentrated on what sort of archeological evidence of the past I might include in the picture of this future world I painted. Along with that I had to look into what future natural disasters might do to our society and ways it might be changed.

How does this relate to the writing of a series and their awesomeness in general you ask?

The true wonder and beauty of a series is the time a writer (or producer) has to develop the story, the backstory, the world the series takes place in and, of course, the characters.

Way back in book one, Marked Yours, the main characters, Todd and Nick were two guys just getting to know each other, struggling to survive in their world and finding their place with one another. All while battling some bad guys.

Their love and their relationship was new, different for them both and had that first blush of excitement. They may have come together in a way we today would consider unconventional, but they faced the same problems every couple faces. In each subsequent book they’re older, their relationship is in a different place and their world is facing different kinds of turmoil.

Writing Todd and Nick as part of a series allows me, the author, more time to develop their relationship, allowing it to change and grow naturally over the course of time. That first blush, a mere seed, took root and grew in a way made possible by plot and character development over the span of several stories. There are ups and downs, trials and tribulations for them as well as joy and that special bond that grows ever deeper over time.

Through, it all, each man learns the important lesson they have each other. During the good and bad times it’s their bond and mutual respect that sees them through, changes and grows. The two of them become their own unique family.

No mention of a series would be complete without saying the most important thing to do is begin at the beginning. A series builds from the first book, each one after adding information and details to the world, the lives and the characters. As a reader and writer the farther into a series I go, the more I love that fictional world and most importantly its inhabitants.