I am politely declining long, multi-book series

Just recently I have come across so many authors who decide to make more money from 21 books of 50,000 words rather than 7 books of 150,000 words.  And it really annoys me.  It feels like a way to ‘milk’ the reader.  Yes, you get a loss leader, with the first book probably permafree, but then the reader is faced with 20 further books that the author expects you to buy.  And I really, really don’t want cliffhangers in the next 19 novels to tempt me into buying the next in series.

I don’t mind up to seven books in one series.  (I have to say that because my own longest series, the Ammonite Galaxy was that.  It took me eight years to write and each book was a reasonable length, I think.  I hope.).

I often look at the free kindle bestseller lists, here:

https://www.amazon.com/Best-Sellers-Kindle-Store/zgbs/digital-text

to find new and interesting authors I haven’t heard of before.  I have found some great ones (and lots of not so great ones, too, but hey, they are free.  It’s easy just to stop reading, right?).

So now, apart from filtering by number of stars, I am careful always to look and see how many books there are in the series.  Up to seven?  Fine, I’ll give it a go.  Over seven? Not a chance.  After all, it only took Harry Potter seven books for all his adventures.  Who needs more?

So I will vacuum up your standalones, your duologies, your trilogies, your tetralogies, your pentalogies, your hexologies, your heptalogies.  But not your nonodecologies or your icosologies.  Enough is enough!

I make exceptions for Janet Evanovich and Michael Connelly, though reluctantly.  I still think they could have tied it all up in seven books.

For the rest of the world …

…the finger paused, didn’t click, and moved on.

Many thanks to Ishdaj for sending me this artwork for the characters in the Ammonite Galaxy series. I love it. It amazes me that the artist has managed to get the idea of some of the basic traits across with so few marks and simply by a change in the line of the mouth or eyes or eyebrows. I can see Diva feeling her privilege, Six being annoying and funny and sharp, and Grace struggling and just a little scared by everything that is happening.

It is very interesting to see how other people visualize the characters. I deliberately gave very few physical descriptions in the books, because I wanted them to be adaptable to the reader. I was hoping that everybody would get their own idea of what the characters looked like, because I always hate it when somebody I have pictured in my mind turns out to be nothing like that preformed notion. I like books which allow the reader some freedom.

Not that I think I have my own fixed idea of what they look like. I would recognize them anywhere, of course, but they are a series of wispy strands to me. A sort of amalgam of all their various good and bad parts. I ‘see’ them but don’t visualize them. Writing feels blind in one sense and hyper-acute in others.

Which made me think about artwork like this and writing. How you can depict people with just a few strokes of a brush. Suggesting, rather than making everything completely defined. And about how you can do the same in words. You don’t actually have to start with height, weight, shape of nose or color of eyes. You can start with just a few sharp lines where a character jumps into life through their dialogue if you are a writer and a few broad strokes for the same effect as an artist.

Well, I have no idea if I got that right with the Ammonite Galaxy series, but it was wonderful to be sent this artwork, and to see how those lines of print can filter into somebody else’s mind and translate into something visual and bright and so true to the characters.

Thank you!

I wrote the whole of the Ammonite Galaxy series in third person past. I didn’t have to think about it. It was simply the way I started. It was great. Although I always kept the story linear, I could hop from point-of-view to point-of-view as I liked. I could put a character’s spin on the events unfolding. I could allow their thoughts to direct the story. I was free, really.

Then I started to think about it. Fatal mistake! Modern books (and some not so modern, of course) were using first person past or even – gasp – first person present. Yikes! I started to notice what the books I was reading were written in. How was it that I had never even noticed what tense the pages I so eagerly turned were written in?

I realized that many of the books that were captivating me were first person accounts. So of course, I simply HAD to try that.

Now, six years on, I am an older and definitely not much wiser person. Each time I start a book I have to agonize for days or weeks about what tense I am going to write in, and what person. I do charts to compare the options. I check other people’s opinions. I change whole chapters from one tense to another. I try to get a feel for the difference. I have written one book in first person present, three in first person past and eleven in third person past. And now? The next book?

Now I can’t decide.

I love writing in third person for the freedom it gives you. The omniscience you can have. Not being stuck with one point-of-view. Not being stuck with one perspective. Not worrying how your character could possibly know such and such a thing. Third person is wonderful. You can dive into one character then another. You can chop and change. You can even go backwards and forwards. Wonderful! Why did I ever think about changing?

I love writing in first person for the immediacy it gives you. The close relationship you get with the main character. The wonderful linear easiness of the whole story.

I love first person present because it leaves me breathless. It deposits me right inside the story, gasping with the main character at all the surprises, desperate to turn the page.

I still can’t decide.

I wish I had never even begun to think about what tense or what person. Why did I start all this?

She put her pen down and stared out of the window.

She puts her pen down and stares out of the window.

I put my pen down and stare out of the window.

I put my pen down and stared out of the window.

And my opinion is equal to yours. They have the same value. WRONG!

The problem comes when we have formed opinions based on different facts. Or even on the same facts that have been presented to us with different spin.

For example:

I read an article that says dogs eat people. I am convinced it is true.

You read an article that says dogs save people. You are convinced it is true.

I am worried about you because you have a dog. Your dog is going to eat you. You should get rid of it.

You are worried because I don’t have a dog. You think my chances of survival are small.

I tell you that if I were a good friend to you I would kill your dog.

You tell me I will be dead soon anyway because I don’t have a dog and that I am disturbed mentally. You stop talking to me.

Who is right? Who is wrong?

The facts would probably tell us that some dogs have killed some people, and that some dogs have saved some people, but that most dogs do neither. That would help us to reach some sort of informed opinion, instead of an deep-seated emotional conviction that each of us is in possession of the absolute truth.

At the moment, we cannot talk to each other about the disagreement. You have hurt my feelings, and for Pete’s sake, you know I want to kill your dog!!

There is a very simple solution. One we should have done before it even got this far. It isn’t really about opinions. It is about the basis of the opinions. We should have FACT-CHECKED the articles we read. BEFORE adopting them blindly with such conviction. At the very least, as soon as it became obvious that you believe dogs save us all and I believe dogs kill us all. How can we counter that with a sniff and ‘I have just as much right as you to an opinion!’

We shouldn’t. We mustn’t. We need to find out the true facts.

• According to WikiLists, Typically, between 30 and 50 people in the US die from dog bites each year, and the number of deaths from dog attacks appear to be increasing. Around 4.5 million Americans are bitten by dogs every year, resulting in the hospitalization of 6,000 to 13,000 people each year in the United States (2005).

• To sum up, from such information I could certainly believe that dogs save between 30 and 50 American lives per year, and also cause between 30 and 50 American lives to be lost. The rest do not, and while evidence appears to show that many Americans are physically harmed by dogs each year, it is also true that many Americans are nurtured mentally by dogs every year.

These facts are clearly not absolute. But they are a little better than we had before. What is your opinion now? Is my life in danger? What is my opinion? Will you be killed by your dog?

I think we would both slightly modify our opinions. Maybe you are safe, I would grudgingly say … for the time being. Maybe even if you had a dog, it wouldn’t be one of the ones who save lives, you might admit.

Both of our opinions have been modified. And now we have a basis for discussion. Now we can really start exchanging views and having a meaningful discussion about it. Before we couldn’t.

We were entitled to our opinions before, and we are entitled to our opinions now.

The question is …

Do they have the same value? Are these new opinions of ours equal to the old ones? Or are they worth more or are they worth less?

And,

by the way,

this was never about dogs!! (No animals were harmed in this article)