Planning a Mystery Series

This week, I’m working on something I’ve never really tackled before, at least on paper. I opened an Excel spreadsheet and began plotting a timeline for the release of upcoming books in my Casey Holland mystery series. The purpose is to create a story arc, including plot themes, for the series so that my publisher and I can take a look at the development of Casey’s personal and professional changes throughout the series.

So far, the exercise hasn’t been difficult because book two is finished, four drafts have been written for book three, and book four is in the first draft stage. I have an idea for the plot theme for book five, but that’s as far as I’ve gotten.

Two interesting things have developed from this process: one is that for the first time, I’m gathering all of the major events, points, and changes in Casey’s life onto one sheet which will make for easy reference later. The second is that I’ve begun to think about this series as a whole, from beginning to end, which has led to some interesting questions, like how many books do I envision the series being? How do I want the series to end? How will Casey change and how will her relationships change? Sure, these things have popped into my mind as I've been writing the books, but I've never stopped to really figure out where I want to go with this series and how the books will progress. For me, it makes sense to have a plan so that the series doesn't go on so long that it becomes tedious and repetitive.

It might seem premature to consider all this when the first book won’t even be out until next spring, but I’ve listened to other writers discuss their series. Many of them wish they could go back and give more thought to the starting point. Some felt they’d aged their characters too quickly, others too slowly. Here’s another issue: if you want to set your books 3 or 4 months apart but it takes you two years to write each novel, technology will run so far ahead of you that your new books might wind up reading more like period pieces. Sue Grafton’s novels are a case in point. She started writing them in the 80’s and, although I haven’t read her most recent books, I believe her stories are now set in the past, i.e. pre-Ipods, cell phones, webcams, social networking, Google, and so forth.

I’m hoping that thinking things through now will help eliminate future problems. There could be plenty of other issues to contend with later.

My amateur sleuth, Vancouver-based, Alex Bellamy mysteries can be purchased at
FATAL ENCRYPTION, http://tinyurl.com/ddzsxl
TAXED TO DEATH, http://tinyurl.com/czsy5n

Textnovel.com serializes REMOTE CONTROL by Cheryl Kaye Tardif

After news spread across North America about the novel I am writing on my iPhone 3G, I have had the pleasure of being interviewed for TV, radio, newspapers and websites, plus I was contacted by Stan Soper, the founder of Textnovel.com, a website devoted to cell phone novels or serialized fiction by phone.

Stan states: "I started Textnovel™ after I stumbled across an article in the New York Times on Japanese teenagers who were writing and reading fiction on their cellphones and publishing them on websites."

This fad has quickly spread across Japan over the past few years and resulted in a number of bestselling novels written mainly by teenagers with no previous writing or publishing experience. Many of the novels were written using cell phone lingo (LOL) and most are Young Adult (YA) novels.

Textnovel is the first English site to offer cell phone novels, which can be read on your computer or cell phone.

With my novel Finding Bliss I take cell phone novels to a whole new level. Not only am I the first person to attempt to write an entire novel using the Notes application on my iPhone 3G, it'll be written with my normal style (no cell phone lingo) and will feature a character who uses and iPhone 3G. This novel may one day find itself on Textnovel.com.

When Stan read about me in a recent press release, he extended a special invitation for me to check out Textnovel.com. That's when I decided to do a test run with my serialized novelette REMOTE CONTROL. I've been posting it on my website, but that will be on hold while I post it to Textnovel.com instead. Feel free to read it on Textnovel.com or you can subscribe and have new chapters delivered right to your cell phone. And don't worry, my chapters are short.

Read REMOTE CONTROL on Textnovel.com.

~Cheryl Kaye Tardif
bestselling author of Whale Song