The Mystery Series

LUCY BURDETTE:  I am very excited to have been invited to give one of the Friends of the Key West Library lectures next month. I think I've decided to talk about the pros and cons of mystery series, both from the perspective of a writer and a reader. But there are so many directions I could go. What do I love about writing them and reading them? What are the pitfalls? How long should a series go on?

I have always read series and also always written them. Why? I think this might be connected to how attached I get to the characters. If a book is great, I don’t want that to be the last word on those characters. I want to know what happens next in their lives.

So help me out here. Which do you enjoy most, writing series or standalones? What problems have you faced? 

HALLIE EPHRON: I've written both series and standalones, and right now my heart belongs to standalones. It's definitely more work having to create a whole new set of characters and a setup each time out. But I feel like I put my characters through so much in a single book, it would be cruel and unusual punishment to make them go another round. They need to get on with their lives.  Having said that, my new novel is the first standalone I've written which really could be the first of a series. Not sure how my publisher would feel about that... I'm thinking about it. 

RHYS BOWEN: I've also written both. I love writing a series because it feels like visiting old friends. The setting is familiar, the secondary characters recur, so in many ways it's easier. Fans come to love a series and talk about the characters as if they are real. They come to think of them as friends. On the other hand I am now writing my fourth stand alone and relish the freedom that gives me to explore such different times and situations. But I do get letters asking me when there will be a sequel, so I think there is a need to revisit favorite characters.

JENN McKINLAY: I'm a series junkie. If I really enjoy the characters, I want to know more and more and more about their lives. The middle ground that I love is the continuity book/series. This is where you have protagonists in one book and then their friends or siblings or partners in crime or what have you, are featured in the next book. You see this a lot in romance but Tana French has mastered it, too. It keeps you in the world but it's not the same character's eccentricities driving the plot. I have yet to write a standalone but perhaps 2019 will be my year!

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: Interesting discussion, because i just had a conversation with a writer friend of mine who is in talks with a potential new agent. The agent requested the uncompleted ms for Book 2 in a prospective series; she came back with much praise for my friend's writing, but passed on repping the book. The agent said new series have become a hard sell right now, because publishers are looking for stand-alone psychological thrillers and domestic suspense, a la WHAT SHE KNEW, INTO THE WATER or THE WOMAN IN CABIN 10. My friend is considering changing up the unfinished manuscript, bringing the backstory forward and focusing the story on the dysfunctional family and unreliable characters, turning it into a stand-alone.

Of course, that's not to say if any stand-alone is a huge success, the publisher wouldn't immediately try to turn it into the first in a series...

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: Oh, my gosh, I'm in love with standalones. When I started writing TRUST ME, I had no idea how different it would be --completely overwhelmingly different. In a series, (which I still love writing and will continue to do so) the ultimate suspense cannot come from the possibility that the main character will actually die. I mean---Jane Ryland's gotta come back for book 5. Right? So it's a challenging juggle to deal with that--the reader knows Jane will survive, and so the focus comes on creating page-turning suspense in the lives and futures of others.

But in a standalone--whoa. Anyone could die. When I realized that--and now it seems so obvious--I actually gasped. And anyone could be lying, and anyone could be guilty, and anyone could turn out to be good or bad. There are no reader expectations whatsoever. The freedom is astonishing. Plus, it is absolutely ALL on the table--and all the loose ends must be tied up. In  THE MURDER LIST, I really went for it. 

DEBORAH CROMBIE: I'm a series junkie, too, always have been. Although I do make exceptions for standalones, Rhys and Hallie and Hank and Jenn! And Roberta with your WIP! But I've always loved getting to know continuing characters and settings, that sense of being able to dip into the lives of old friends. Nor have I had any real desire to write a standalone. I have so much fun with my big cast of characters that I haven't felt a great need to stretch beyond them, and every book has a new set of characters as well.


Not that  I would say no if a terrific standalone idea suddenly took hold in my brain, but it would NOT be the sort of book that Julia has been told editors are looking for--so maybe I should just stick to what I'm doing...

LUCY: that wouldn't be me either Debs--too scary to keep something like that in my head for a year! Now your turn Red readers, what do you like/not like about mystery series? How long can one reasonably go on? If you were in the audience, what would you want to know about the nuts and bolts of the process?

What Hank's Wroting: Too Manny Typpos

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: So the good news and bad news.

The good news, actually the fantastic wonderful brilliant amazing news, is: look at this! Here are the first pass pages of TRUST ME, my upcoming psychological thriller. Doesn’t this look amazing?

You know the first pass pages, right? They are the first time the word document manuscript turns into a typeset book. It always brings tears to my eyes when they arrive, and I always have it printed out so I can see how it will really look.

But "how it will really look" has a big hulking pitfall. Because somehow, even though I copy edited it, and proofread it, and so did the copy editor, and so did the proofreader, there are so many mistakes in this first pass that it is jaw-dropping.

Every one of these stickies is a typo or change. And I am not finished.

I suppose it makes sense, when you think of how many words, and how many letters, and how many spaces, and how many characters, and how many potential landmines there are throughout. A dropped comma, a quotation mark turned the wrong way, a line left out, a word left out, or a repeated word, or the wrong word, or a word or phrase that you never should've used in the first place and now it is in there three or four times.

In this manuscript, even more landmines. There's actually a place where "find and replace" did not work. It worked every other time for exactly the same change, but on these three pages, it didn't. See?

As a result, someone's name is changed, and what appears to be a new character just pops out of nowhere. For a page or two. All the Berlands got changed to Spofford. All except these.

We are trying to figure out what to do. Since early-early arcs are already being printed.

But onward. I am honestly reading this with a finger pointing to every word as I go by, because--and this may be a good thing--it's so much fun to read the story that it is tempting just to read fast to see what happens. Even though I know what happens. And there are moments, I will admit to you my dear friends, when I think wow, this is pretty darn good :-) and then I find yet another typo, or another place where I use the same word a zillion times or where there's a word that's an artifact, or a punctuation mark out of nowhere.

My dear Dad (a well-published non-fiction writer and career diplomat) used to tell me: “There’s always another typo.” True, Dad. Ture.

TRUST ME—a standalone, love that--comes out next August, so you’ll get to wait a while before I bug you to pre-order. And they are working on the cover now. So excited about that.

The first three chapters of TRUST ME are in the back of the paperback of SAY NO MORE, and that is really amazing to see.

Here's a tiny bit more… just for you.

Tell me if you find any typos.

Reds and readers, do you see many typos in the books you read?

                                                       Chapter 4

It’s not like I can’t leave the house. I do it when I need to. Even drive. But when I do I can’t avoid seeing the driveway, and our street, and that tree.  Four hundred and forty two days ago they took away the crumpled car. Took away my family, too. When I’m out in public, I can’t avoid people asking if I’m okay. I’m not. Of course I’m not.

           But now, alone at my desk and ready to write, I can focus on another little girl. Thanks to the relentless coverage, I’ve compiled a gold mine of material. Interviews. Photographs. Video from local and national news. Katherine had dropped off a stack of  revealing documents, including the Dayton police reports and inside investigative stuff her sources gave her, so now I’ll devour that, too. I’ll double-check the facts when I can. It’ll feel real, all right.

Instead of using today’s opening statements, I’ll open the book with an inside look at Ashlyn Bryant’s parents. A personal take on their then-missing granddaughter. After a chapter or two of build-up, I’ll do Day One of the trial.

It’s tricky.

The order of the book, chronological from beginning to end, won’t follow the actual order of the trial, which will go witness to witness. Two stories underway at once. Mine, and Ashlyn’s.

Two weeks after the verdict, Ashlyn Bryant will be sentenced.  As soon as the judge sends her away for life, the publisher wants my book ready to go. That means the two weeks between verdict and sentencing will be a writing marathon. And of course, I’ll have to add the ending.

            Ending? She killed her own daughter! My brain almost screams at me. While you were burying yours. 

             It had almost confused me, if I could have been any more confused fourteen months ago, when news broke that they’d found the body of a little girl on the beach. June--sunny, and sadistically gorgeous--and I had just managed to walk out of Dex and Sophie’s funeral. With everything else going on, Dex’s mom had tried to keep the story from me, best she could. Someone at the cemetery, I forget who, actually told me about Baby Boston. Of course back then, no one knew who she really was.

          Well, Ashlyn did.

          I look at my almost-blank laptop screen. I delete, letter by letter, “DAY ONE.”. I replace it by typing something else in the manuscript. The title I just thought of.

                                               LITTLE GIRL LOST

Where was their Tasha Nicole?

Sun-battered and dry as only western Ohio can be, Dayton was breathtakingly hot that summer day. Inside their modest Laughtry Drive split-level in a beige and concrete suburb, the little girl’s grandparents, Tom and Georgia Bryant, were telling a story that made no sense. 

Georgia--pale lipstick, a hint of brown eye shadow and wearing a sleeveless top studded with tiny pink pearls--was a devoted homemaker. Solicitous and insistently helpful.  She looked too young to be a grandmother. Tom, a retired insurance adjustor gone gray, sat silently on the gold damask couch, stiff-backed in shorts and a knit polo shirt, a glass of iced tea sweating in his hand. 

Georgia’s words tumbled out, as if she couldn’t reveal the mystifying information about their daughter Ashlyn quickly enough. Ashlyn Louise, their only child.  “I’ll start at the beginning,” she said to a reporter.