But unfortunately I’m NOT Michelle Celmer. Last week she got clobbered with an unexpected serious family health emergency, and so she’s not able to be with us today. I’ve been trying to think what I could do to help that might be useful, but since she’s working against a deadline right now as well, what would be most useful would be a couple of cups of dialogue or description (or maybe a pinch of plot) but I can’t seem to work out the logistics!
She’s, of course, knee-deep (or even deeper now) in her Royal Seductions series for Silhouette Desire: the four already out are The King’s Convenient Bride, The Illegitimate Prince’s Baby, An Affair with the Princess, and The Duke’s Boardroom Affair. The next in the series will be out in July, with two more to follow.
There are obviously major differences between doing series and doing individual books, one of the most important being that the writer has to have the entire cast of
characters in mind before the series begins, so that each may make an entrance at the appropriate time. One of the satisfactory parts is that the writer doesn’t have to say a reluctant goodbye to characters who’ve been daily companions during the course of the book’s completion — they can come back to help fill out the background of the next book. Then the challenge is to keep clearly in mind who the characters were when they were in center stage, so that they go on being the same people when they’ve moved gracefully out of the limelight.
Nora Roberts says that she thinks of the individual books in her series as being in many ways like the sections of the great panorama that the completed series becomes. The end of each individual book is not only a story in its own right, but is building toward the climax that will bring the whole series to a satisfying end. I always think of her tour de force in achieving that was her Chesapeake Bay Trilogy, which belatedly (it was years later) turned into a Saga instead, when in Chesapeake Blue she gave the story of the man who had been a young boy in the earlier books — and, craftsman that she is, managed to tie the three earlier books into the conclusion of the last one. Which shows, I suppose, that planning it all out in advance is not absolutely necessary, if you know what you’re doing the way Nora does.
In Michelle’s Royal Seductions, the grandeur of the Palace runs through all the books. Not all the characters are completely at home there: in The Duke’s Boardroom Affair, Victoria Houghton is an employee of the Duke, a cousin of the royal family. For her, the Palace is a place she recognizes from the outside. Gradually she is drawn further into the family, and to the gorgeous apartments within the Palace where they live. For the King and his sister, Princess Sophie, the walls of the Palace still remind them of their very royal but less than happy childhood spent where they live now. In theory they are now free to construct their own lives, but in practice what they were taught — and what they were not taught — shapes their responses to their new situations until they choose to make their own decisions. For their illegitimate half-brother, the Palace is something else entirely, and the new family he discovers presents challenges he may never have expected.
So a series offers the reader the wonderful opportunity to find a world that gradually
becomes more familiar as the stories are told. Instead of walking away entirely at the end, there’s the opportunity to open another door further down the hall, to have a different viewpoint on what goes on in the lives of these interrelated people, to learn more about the story you were just told as you read the story unfolding now.
We must love series, given the number of them that are available. Michelle Celmer’s Royal Seductions gives us the chance to learn a lot about the Royals of Morgan Isle, a mysterious kingdom you may never have noticed before, in the Irish Sea between England and Wales and Ireland. There’s another island kingdom, Thomas Isle, very close at hand. Will we be moving on to that island as well?
We’ll find out in July.
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Beppie, I have got to get this series. It sounds so wonderful. Series books are a favorite of mine. After spending hours coming to know characters so closely, I want to know more about them and their family!
Yeah, I like series too. They keep me buying the books – I love series in historicals more than contemporaries. I don’t know why. I loved Julia Quinn’s Bridgertons and I am now onto Eloisa James Duchesses. And growing up, I loved Jude Devereaux’s Montgomeries. I still pick those up to reread upon occasion.
I guess I tend to do the same, but I don’t do familes. I just pick a character from one book and write their story. Mostly because they demand it.
Keri, I’m glad it sounds good to you! It’s been great fun being alongside as the series developed. Like you, after reading a book I’m reluctant to let the characters go!
And Amy — if you like the Duchesses, try Eloisa James’s preceding series, about four sisters whose father was rich only in the horseflesh he adored, and died, leaving his daughters in the custody of a good-hearted (but usually drunk) Earl whom he had met only once. For each girl, as a dowry, he left a fine race horse. The four books (Much Ado About You, Kiss Me, Annabel, The Taming of the Duke, and Pleasure for Pleasure) are wonderful. Just finished re-reading them!
Thanks for that, Beppie. I think I may have read one or two just didnt’ realize they were a series. I’ll have to go back and look at those.
I seem to have become sort of a saleswoman for that series! I forget who recommended them to me, but (obviously) I loved them, and just brought the first one, Much Ado About You, to loan to a woman I exercise with who doesn’t read romance. I figured if that one doesn’t do it for her (she’s a psychology professor) she’s beyond hope.
Awesome post Beppie! Ilove series. I don’t want the characters to go away, even the smallest of them. My CP, LKap, did a post on how you fall in love with the secondary characters because although you love the hero, he’s already taken. In other words, it would be like cheating on your best friend. But the secondary characters, well…he’s up for grabs. Then he gets his own book and you fall in love with the next one.
Sorry to hear about Michelle’s family emergency! Wishing her all the best with whatever she is dealing with.
I love ready series too. Especially when they mention the main characters from a previous book and let me know what’s going on with them as well.
Vicki, I know just what you mean about not wanting the characters to go away. That’s the sadness that comes with finishing a single title that is just that — a SINGLE title. I like what your CP said, and for me it’s true, too.
Melissa, I’ll pass on your kind wishes to Michelle. She has a plateful at the moment, poor thing.