What do you expect from a series?

Continuity and yet new and exciting plots? Recurring characters? An overall plot? Do you read specific series for the world an author has created or the ever changing plots? The big end game? The good vs evil?

Continuity. By this I'm talking about the world. It's the little things that matter, right? But what if a hint of those little things had been introduced in previous stories? Would that be acceptable? Little clues to mysteries and such.

But what about the characters? Do you like to see characters from previous books make cameo appearances? Or do you prefer more substantial roles? Or do you even prefer a series of books following a couple?

Now personally, I like a good over-arcing plot. I like to ferret out details, the mystery, the whodunit of a longer story. My problem is when an author elongates the mystery for the sake of sales. Now, as an author myself, sales are important. But as a reader, don't cheat me.


What are your favorite series? What do you like to see included in one?

World Building

I hadn't realized that it needed to be done, I don't write paranormals or futuristic stories but yup...it's necessary anyway. World building.

Oh, sure, I've heard the term before, but always with the paranormal set. Who knew I'd need it for a Regency story? But historicals have their own world, one I thought well known enough not to bother. How wrong I was!

Dress, speech, travel, servants, tradition, customs, and even location are integral to the story. Everyone who reads a Regency story knows the world--right? Wrong. The problem isn't the well-known aspects of Jane Austen's world, it's what she never wrote about. Those are the things that interest me. Those are the things I want to write about. Those are what's important to world building.

Not just streets and balls and dances, or even etiquette and speech patterns. No, what's important is knowing both the history of the place, and the history of its people.

Without the people, there is no place.

So yes, world building in a paranormal means creating these things from scratch. But world building in any story means knowing those things (but not necessarily using them) as if you made them all up from scratch.

Regency Bathing Machine

Bathing in Brighton and what I found in my Regency research.

It wasn't a foreign concept for Regency people to enjoy the beach. Their method just differed from what we do today. Note the full clothing from head to toe! And those  houses that roll into the water-Bathing Houses where you could change in complete privacy and bathe in equal privacy. Or, if you weren't into sea bathing, your sensibilities weren't offended by those who wished to.

Creating a world

Or world building, take your pick. In my first published story, Inamorata, the era was Venice circa 1690. I knew the city, looked up a couple canal names on a map, doubled checked the fashion, and bam! World created.
Making one up from scratch is a lot harder.

I'm working on two separate and distinct shorts for Ravenous' Apocalypse Today: Love Among the Ruins. They both take place in the same world, but in different areas with different experiences and different outcomes.

I had no idea it would be this hard! Taking a slice of the past and adding in a bit of historical intrigue and a heavy dose of romance and sex is one thing. Translating that heavy dose of romance and sex into a world of my own creating? More difficult. Not because, I think, of the transition itself, because of the world itself.

Coruscant from the Star Wars films, check it out. A city-world. Pretty cool!

So my questions in creating this brave new world are:
WHY is it a post apocalypse world? WHAT happened? WHEN did it happen? WHERE did it happen? WHO did it happen to? WHO made it happen? HOW did it happen?

Who, what, where, when, why, and how? Journalistic questions for an erotic romance. It all works. And after much frustration, I'll be using those questions from now on, whether going forward with this hell-world, or (finally) finishing my Regency ménage.

How do other people world build? I'm curious.