What's in a Series?

So as I look through the #PitchWars twitter feed, one of the @LH_Writes said about 65 of the 75 queries have series potential and the rest are PB. That being said, what the heck is up with all these series?

Of course, what am I writing? A series... of a sort...

I love and hate series all at the same time. Most series are kind enough to provide us an update every year, except for that one guy who no one is allowed to mention because then he might kill off Tyrion.

Yes, I love you Peter Dinklage

But when I start a new series I almost want to wait until I know the last book is almost ready to come out because I'm not a patient person. I started reading Harry Potter three months before the seventh book came out. I read them in two months and thought I was going to die waiting for the Deathly Hallows.

This was me when it finally hit my mailbox

Because I invest in the characters, I want to know everything about them. I fall in love with them and I want to be with them, they are a part of my soul. Over the past week I fell in love with a new cast of characters. Tamlin and Feyre from A Court of Roses and Thorns. And this was only the first book. So now I wait and wait to see what comes next for them.



No seriously, go pick it up NOW

And yet, I have set out to write a series. To torture other readers.

It didn't start out this way, really. I wrote what I wrote. One single fairy tale. Of all the things I'd ever written, I never thought fantasy would be one of them. As a child I read mysteries, poured through every Nancy Drew book I could find. The first book I wrote (in third grade) was a mystery. Then, I grew up. I fell in love with historical fiction. The second book I started writing (seventh grade) was set in the civil war because I loved Gone with the Wind so much. Of every book idea I've ever had, fantasy was never one of them.

Until I sat down to write my first, real, grown-up book.

And at the end there is closure, not 100%, but closure. And yet, I saw one character, a small minor character and thought, what if I give her a story? Then another character spoke to me, a story that I'd had brewing in my mind for some time as a historical. What if I tweaked it just a bit. Yes, he deserves his own story too.




In case you're wondering where I'm headed next...

Thus my series is born. I even sat down to draw a map. Just a crude version to see what my land would look like. I ended up with a continent of thirteen kingdoms. And my intention is to give each a story. A story as different and varied as the spanning of our continents. Does that make it the same as a real series? I have no idea. But I'll keep writing my fairy tales as long as the ideas keep popping out of my brain.

Will the real homo sapiens please stand up?

alternatively: How to stop hate

So when I was in high school I was in the marching band...

Ok, you can stop laughing now.

Anyway, when I meet someone now, if I find out they were in marching band, we play a little game. What instrument did you play?

Not to brag, but I'm pretty good at this game. Because if you look at most of the groups within the band, you notice certain trends, certain groups get a reputation.

If you played trumpet, you were a hot shot and a little full of yourself.

If you played percussion, you were a squirrely spaz, or I dated you.

If you were a flute player, you were a stuck-up girl, or a girl in general.

If you were a clarinet player, you remind me of Amy Farrah-Fowler.

If you were a tuba player, you were a party animal, and generally an all-around awesome person to be around.

Of course, these are exaggerations, but you see what I'm saying. We had our cliques, and it said something about you without even realizing it. And it's always a funny joke for me because people usually guess I played the flute. Which I did, until I became awesome.

What does this have to do with real-life people hate? In case you've been living under a rock, get on your google and search Indiana and gay. It will tell you everything you need to know and more. Then there's the feminist issues popping up all over the internet and rape shaming, which is beyond my comprehension. And I would be remiss if I didn't include the Baltimore riots and before that the Ferguson riots. Can't exclude pretty much everything going on in the Middle East.

But what do all the issues have in common? Hate.

And it makes me sick. Because everyone is so busy trying to decide who is right and who is wrong that we're really missing the big picture. We're all humans. And somewhere, a long time ago, we stopped seeing that. We started segregating into white or black, gay or straight, woman or man. Not just people.

So yes, the marching band is a ridiculously small model of a human ecosystem, but if I'm judging one person based on what I think about a group of people that I knew *cough* fifteen years ago, then how is it really any different.

Will I stop playing my guessing game in the future? Probably not. Because it's a fun way to get to know people. But I will stop judging all percussionists because of that one jerk that broke up with me in high school.

Moral of the story, next time one of these hot button issues comes up, stop. Take the situation and put it in the context of a human being. Things look a lot different from that perspective.



Thank you to http://www.reactiongifs.com/ for the gifs.