Celebration #3 ~ 2nd Book Published ~ 1 Hour after the 1st Book

A Game of Spies

Salons and soirées, flirtation and dancing, gambling and spies: Josette and Giles fall in love over a deck of cards—and try not to die.

Available in ebook and paperback.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B016XI58PY

https://books2read.com/u/b5ZzxR

Trailer  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y3z34pr0ycM  https://youtu.be/y3z34pr0ycM

3rd Book written, 2nd in the Hearts and Hazard series, 2nd book published.

As 3rd book written, the computer folder for these files "A Game of Spies" while #1 and #2 computer folder names are "Smuggler Story" and "Rafe and Maggie". By this third book, I realized I wasn't writing Stand-Alone Novels, but a series. The series was going to be loosely interconnected, picking up minor characters from one book to become a major character in another book.

For example, one of Josette's fellow whist players is Gordon Musgrove, who became a major character in Book 4, The Dangers of Secrets. Another minor character (Toby) became a major character in Book 5, The Dangers for Spies. A minor character in the first book A Game of Secrets (Jess) became a major character in Book 6, The Dangers to Hearts.

Another series-linking element would be the titles. The first 3 books would be Game; the second 3 would be Dangers; the third, Key; the 4th and last, Hazard. All would follow the pattern of Secrets / Spies / Hearts. Easy naming of books, I thought. Easy for readers to spot the next book. Easy to keep up with where they were in the series.  

The third series-linking element was the setting: Regency England. What could possibly go wrong?

I Thought. Those are always dangerous words for writers.

At that point, in writing the first six books in the series, I had an interesting pattern set and thought figuring out Book 7 would be SO EASY. 

Another dangerous thought for writers. I was wrong.

I didn't complete Book 7 for over a year, after Books 4 / 5 / 6 were three months in a row. Distractions and disruptions were the cause of the delay for Book 7. 

Distractions and Disruptions were NOT the problems for the year-long delay of Book 8. From February to June, I struggled with that book. 

1st, Book 8 didn't want to be in Regency England. I had to change the setting to Spain. Still in the Regency Era, but associated with the Peninsular War rather than society or life in Britain.

2nd, Book 8 was perfectly happy with the title it would receive. However, it didn't want to use any character that had been mentioned before. Okay, I told Simon Pargeter, the main character, we can work with this.

3rd, I had decided to plan everything, hoping that would make the writing speed along. I plotted everything that would happen. I planned every scene, every step. I loved my characters and the story that was developing.

But ~ 50% into the book, I hit a wall. Every sentence became a struggle. Every page began to take a hour to complete. Something was wrong, and I didn't know what.

Check back on October 12 for a rattling one-sided conversation about Book 8.

I promise that I will NOT rattle like this for every daily post.