Kate Flora: How does a writer know when to say goodbye to a series? It’s a question I’ve
been pondering on a lot lately. When I read a recent Michael Connelly, Harry Bosch was being treated for a serious cancer. He’s a Vietnam vet, so likely in his 70’s. How long can he go on being the tough guy? And then last week, there was an article in the Maine papers saying that Gerry Boyle, a writer I’ve been a long time fan of, is about to publish his last Jack McMorrow mystery. And Barbara Ross is ending her clambake series.
These are interesting questions for me. When I started the Joe Burgess police procedural series, I had planned to write a quartet, with each of the four books taking place in a different season. Playing God takes place in February, beginning on a bitterly cold night in Portland. By contrast, the second Burgess, The Angel of Knowlton Park, begins on a miserably hot summer day. Redemption begins on a beautiful October day and And Grant You Peace, supposed to be the final book in the series, takes place in the spring. I was happy with the plan but a few months after I finished the fourth book, I found that I was missing my characters.
Readers evidently were missing them, too, because I started getting messages asking when the next Burgess would come out. Readers assured me that Maine has lots of other seasons: mud season, hunting season, black fly season, tourist season, etc. Now that I’m working on book nine, I’ve abandoned seasons. Now I try not to have my murders too close together so I can give my characters a break from the action. After the horrific events in A Child Shall Lead Them, Burgess, Kyle, and Perry badly needed a break.
Like many authors with a first book, I didn’t plan to write a series featuring my Thea Kozak character. I had a story, inspired by an Ann Landers column, about a girl who goes searching for her birth parents and ends up dead. In order to tell that story, I needed someone with a strong enough connection to the victim to be willing to risk danger to find her killer, and Thea appeared in Chosen for Death. It was only when a beta reader said how much he liked the character and would like to see more of her that the series began.
That series almost ended at book six, Liberty or Death, when my publisher dropped the series. This may be why many series that seem so promising abruptly end, leaving readers (and writers, of course) disappointed. I was lucky. Jim Huang of the Mystery Company liked Thea, and rescued the series. Now that Thea is married and has finally had the baby she and Andre have longed for, I’ve been thinking it should be a good stopping point. But readers are writing and asking for the next book, so probably, when this Burgess is finished, I’ll see how she can get back into trouble once her maternity leave is over. But here’s the thing: it is as hard to find childcare in a book as it is in real life, so if the series is to go on, Thea’s going to have to find a good nanny.
I do often wonder how other writers approach the issue of ending a series. Do they run out of ideas for the next plot? Do they get tired of their characters or find themselves repeating plots? Are they tired of writing mystery fiction and long to write something new and different? I have certainly found that taking a break from a series helps to bring me back to it refreshed. At first, it was just the experience of moving from a first person amateur female PI in my Thea Kozak series, to a third person trio of cops in the Burgess series. The series were different enough that I would return to each one eager to see what my characters were up to and to hear their voices.
Now that interval often involves writing an entirely different book. True crime? Domestic suspense? Romantic suspense or straight romance? I always come back to one of my series, though. I’m not tired of my characters. I’m still curious about where their stories will go next.
I’m not even ready to kill off any of my major characters. Readers used to encourage me to kill off Thea’s mother. I thought, and still think, it’s better for her to learn to live with her mother, difficult as she is. And I know how readers feel when characters they love are killed off. Some years ago, a number of series mystery writers were killing off their protagonist’s significant others. I got plenty of mail from readers stating that if I killed off Andre, they wouldn’t read me anymore.
So what about you, dear readers? How do you feel when a beloved character or series ends?
I’m sad to see a long-running series end, but prefer when it it the author’s choice because I would hope the series would end in a good place.
Always sad to see the end but that is the progression of life. Maybe offshoot characters to keep it alive?
Any chance that Detective Sam Warren will be a part of a new series?
If I ever get Scarred in print, I will def. want to write a sequel.
k.
It depends on how the author handles it, or is permitted to handle it. When a series is terminated by a publisher it unfortunately often ends in mid arc. If it is the author’s decision, then the characters are left in a good place, their lives settled, and as a reader, I am happy to wish them well with their futures even though I won’t see them. If it’s the publisher’s decision, I often find myself hoping someone else picks up the series and let’s it continue long enough to wrap up.
For me, it’s not so much as whether to end a series as to begin a new one. If I do that, then I’m not writing on the old one, am I?
Interesting topic. I suspect most series (other than bestsellers) end because the publisher pulled the plug, but that could just be my experience. The Face Down series I wrote as Kathy was dropped after seven books, picked up by a small press for another three, and then continued in a spin off for another three books with a British publisher. I ended that relationship after they rejected a proposal for #3 and wanted the story I proposed as #4 instead, which totally messed up my timeline and character arcs. Short stories filled in some of the gaps, and when I self-published the three Face Book Collection ebooks I was able to include them and put everything in chronological order. I’m happy now with the way the series ended, but I wasn’t any of the three times there was a hiatus. To be honest, though, I voluntarily stopped offering proposals to the small press because, at that time, I really needed to write something that would earn a decent advance and maybe make a little money besides. That led to the two series I wrote as Kaitlyn, both of which were dropped by the publisher when I would have been happy to keep writing them. Since the characters in both series were in good places, and since spending long hours in front of my pc was getting difficult for me physically by that point, I decided not to continue either series on my own, but I definitely would have if my publisher had been willing to offer a new contract.
Worse possible way a series can end? If the author dies. That said, in most cases, it’s a bad idea for someone else to continue the series.
On a note related to your Lady Appleton series (not Lady Susannah?), I was talking with Luci Zahray last night and she said you posed a poison question to her for that series that was the hardest question she’s ever had. She’s given me great advice several times.
Yes, she was a life saver. It was for a short story where the primary clue had to do with a dovecote–an offshoot of visiting two of these large and kind of odd structures on our 2001 three-week research trip to England.
It frightens me to say that none of them need die these days, even after author death as we’ve all seen. True story, Ian Rankin’s Rebus was getting near retirement age and fans seriously began a campaign the police officers retire later! With improvements in AI, writer competition could be a bot. In my short story I mentioned, they all survive to detect over and over. (Included a popular narrator who is perhaps more at risk than authors.Sad, but true, and if it’s good enough in five years, likely doable.
Betty Webb’s initial series was written with her knowing how, where, and why it would end. Now, she’s getting pleas to rewrite the character. She might. Conan Doyle did. Who knows.
Lovely, thought provoking article. Thank you Kate.
Thank you, Kate. I am very interested in this topic in part because I enjoy series. Like many readers, I grow attached to the characters in series. Bosch, for example, is a character I really like, but as Kate says, I know he can’t go on much longer. Yet I don’t want Bosch to die. Michael Connelly does his best to age Bosch in a way that prepares us, and to ready himself and his readers for that time when Bosch must depart. Fortunately he has developed other strong protagonists living and working in the same setting. If he wants to, he can keep writing in the world he’s already created. Settling in over many years with characters we love is one of the great pleasures of reading. On the other hand, I would rather see an author end a series than turn the characters over to another author.