I'm excited to welcome my friend Janet Lee Barton to Seriously Write today. Janet's a talented author who has written some wonderful series for both Love Inspired Historical and Barbour. She has some great tips to share with us, so sit back and enjoy her wonderful post.
- Terri
I’m very excited to have a story
coming out in the Barbour Collection, Love
Is Patient in February! My story, Harvest of Love, is the first sale I
made and the beginning of the first series I wrote, my historical New Mexico series. I can only give
credit to the Lord for making that come about, for when I first started
writing, all I wanted was a published story.
But, from that little novella, three
novels, A Promise Made, A Place Called Home and Making Amends, came about and they are all
still available in eBook. I loved these stories and learned much about writing
series from it. I’ve always liked reading series, as long as they are stand
alone stories, and I love writing them.
Even though they are stand alone,
my series are tightly connected—with friends, family--or in my Boardinghouse Betrothal series for
LIH—the people who live in Heaton House and have become like family to each
other.
For those authors who might want to
begin writing a series like that, the time to begin is with that first story,
if possible, and then trust in the Lord to give you more ideas. Should you decide you want to do a series
after the first story has been written, but didn’t have characters to build
on—it can still be done by introducing your new characters and then bring in
characters from the first story, but show a relationship beginning between old
and new characters—new friendships starting, an old friend coming back into
one’s life, etc.
I try to bring in supporting
characters the readers like and care about, and want to know more about, so
that I have choices in who to bring into the next story as a hero or heroine.
They can’t take over the main story when they are a supporting character, but
they need to show up enough that one cares about them. A best friend, a sister,
cousin, etc. work great!
In Harvest of Love, the café owner, Emma, was a friend of the heroine,
Liddy, and Emma became the heroine in A
Promise Made. In that story, the citizens of Roswell came to be known and
from there it was no problem to bring in others who became friends to populate
the other two stories in the series. Be sure to bring in new people you think
might work for another story. You don’t have to use them in the next story, but
maybe several books later.
You can bring in new people at any
time, but be sure to connect them to others. In A Place Called Home, the heroine was from Roswell, but the hero
wasn’t. So you have room to be creative.
I’m thinking of continuing this
series one day. The beauty of writing series in this day and age of publishing
is that you can decide when it ends—or doesn’t. Or when it starts back up
again. I hope you think about writing a series and have as much joy doing it as
I do!
Bestselling author Janet Lee
Barton is a Romantic Times Book of the Year winner as well as a multiple ACFW
Carol Award nominee. Janet was born in New Mexico and has lived all over the
South. She and her husband now call Oklahoma home and have recently downsized to
a condo, which they love. When Janet isn't writing or reading, she loves to cook
for family, work in her small garden, travel and sew. She writes both Historical
and Contemporary romance, and loves writing about faith, families, friends and
of course, falling in love.
Visit her at www.janetleebarton.com Sign up for her newsletter there to get writing news first.
Visit her at www.janetleebarton.com Sign up for her newsletter there to get writing news first.
