After a much needed day off to breathe, I was thinking about the differences between writing a book that stands alone and writing a book that will have more story following after it. There are differences you know.

When I wrote Prophecy about a year ago, I planned on it standing alone. There was no more story to tell. I believed that Seven and Rhoswen were finished. Let the reader imagine what happened to them after that. I had no reason to keep going. Then I started writing Forbidden and I found myself bringing those characters back again. I just couldn't let them go.

With all the plans I have for Seven and Rhoswen and everyone in that universe, I don't think I'll be letting them go for a long time. But that doesn't mean that everything I write is going to involve them.

It's different to think that I'm going to have to finish a story in one volume instead of being able to stretch it out. I'm getting into the last half of Awakening and I'm thankful that I don't have to cram everything I'm thinking about into these last seventy or so pages. With a stand alone novel, you're done when you hit that last page. That means you have to have enough story to get to that last page.

My advice to anyone writing the first novel is to not plan for a series right from the get go unless you have so much going on in your plot mapping that it would require more than one book. I didn't plan on a series, and now I'm in the middle of one. But at least Prophecy can stand on it's own two feet. Now I can surprise readers with cliffhanger endings and driving plot lines that make you wish I'd written the whole thing before I released the first one.

But even a stand alone novel can make readers want more from you. That's not such a bad thing either. You just get to create new characters every single time. In reality, that's probably harder.