Starting the Second Book
Writing a series has been eye-opening in many ways, but the biggest surprise is how fast the second and third books go. Well, went. This is just our second series, so stay tuned.
The thing I’m realizing now, as we start Very Nice Funerals, is how this has shifted the romance plot for me. Writing stand-alone, the lovers meet, work out a relationship, and commit. That worked for me until I did the Liz/Vince series and realized that the interesting stuff happens after the okay-let’s-do-this ending. Now they’re together. The hard stuff starts. I had a great time with that in the Liz/Vince books, showing how they tentatively got in deeper with each other, trying to navigate their issues and their needs. It was so much more interesting that my standard romance plot (although I really do not know how I’d arc that further in a second Liz/Vince series, so I’m still cogitating on that.)
But the Rose/Max relationship is even more off the wall than Liz and Vince. (more…)
The thing about writing love stories when you’re a naturally cynical person with disastrous relationships in her past is that achieving the willing suspension of disbelief necessary to convince the reader that they all lived happily ever after is really difficult. I have found, in trying to do this, that the most useful thing to remember is that we’re writing to promise mature love. Immature love/infatuation is easy to write, but everybody knows that doesn’t last. Mature love, the connection beyond conditions, is hard to write, but if we can get that promise on the page, it’s what powers the romance. 
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