Once Upon A time I Wrote A Series in Longhand

Actually, I've written two series - one in junior high school, "Tales of the Space Dragon,"  which a very observant reader will notice might have some resemblance to the old Tom Corbett Space Cadet books. But my series vastly expanded on that limited concept and I involved the extended families of my characters all across the galaxy, as well as introducing new characters with each installment and creating one gigantic HEA somewhere around Book Eleven (lots of marriages and kids). Although written in my very best cursive (wow, I can't even print legibly these days), this series will of course never see the light of day. I can't even reread them. I did, however, drop a nod to the Space Dragon, which was the name of the space ship, into my best selling "Wreck of the Nebula Dream" last year.

In senior high school, I wrote a vastly more sophisticated series, "Tales of the Starfire," with Starfire as the name of the ship. A very observant reader will notice some oh similarities to "Star Trek,"  although I had a female protagonist and all of humanity was either under the dominion of the evil alien race ("Rzzkstor" - say that ten times!) or living on a sekrit base under Antarctica. Or on this one ship! And again, cue the HEA with marriages and babies and I even wrote a sequel about the granddaughter of my heroine and a prequel about the ancestress of all of them. The connecting thread, besides the ship, was a nearly immortal, many-armed alien Chief Engineer. And as you might expect, ALL of this SFR marvelousness is totally unreadable. OMG. But hey, I was learning.

(I also messed up my GPA because on the day we were supposed to be diagramming sentences, I was at a key plot point and I consciously decided to take a C on the diagramming and work on my novel all 6th period instead. Seriously, WHAT is the point of diagramming sentences??? Although I can still stick those pesky adverbs on their downward pointing lines to this day...but I digress.)

So when I began seriously working on becoming a published author a few years ago, I decided connected series were probably the way for me to go. Tell lots of stories in one universe but not try for direct sequels. So my SFR's are currently all taking place in the galactic Sectors of the far future and my Ancient Egyptian paranormals are all occuring in 1550 BCE, during the reign of my pharaoh Nat-re-Akhte. (You can peruse my web page if your curiousity is piqued.)

But now, I find I'm "thinking in series mode" again! I'm finishing up a witch & shifter WIP that would be the start of a four or five book series. I actually know the key plot points for each, which is amazing since I'm NOT a plotter.  I'm contemplating the arc of a generational family series in my Ancient Egypt. I just wrote a direct sequel to my first ever published novel...Readers have been asking for the sequel to "Wreck of the Nebula Dream", which is an author's dream (they actually want to know what happened to Khevan and Twilka next?!)....what is going on here??? Maybe my Muse is getting ambitious LOL, stretching her wings. (Do Muses have wings? Save that thought for another post.)

I don't think I'll ever be a Nalini Singh, with her incredibly detailed series, where you're reading book 12 and you discover she's now resolved a question she barely brought up in a much beloved short story years ago - I love her books!!! Or an Anne McCaffrey with all the years of delicious revelations about how the Dragons of Pern came to be. But maybe there's hope for me yet.

Do you have a favorite series?