We are delighted to welcome Christina Hollis to the blog today. Many writers would like to know about writing a series of books and how to carry characters forward to their own stories and books. As well as writing this information blog post Christina has generously offered one of her books as a prize to our readers.
I’d always wanted to
write a series of novels with characters in common, but I was so happy writing
one-off romances (you can find a selection here, http://www.millsandboon.co.uk/christina-hollis), it never happened.
Until—
It Was A Dark And Stormy... Afternoon
The idea for His Majesty’s
Secret Passion came
out of the blue, or rather, out of the murky February gloom. I needed sunshine
and warmth, but holidays were a distant mirage (or possibly a
hypothermia-induced hallucination).
When you’re a writer,
you can always escape into your imagination. I wanted pampering, and spa
treatments, and oranges picked fresh from the tree. The nearest I could manage
was turning up the central heating, switching on the SAD light, and getting
down to work. You can read a short extract from
His
Majesty’s Secret Passion at
http://bit.ly/1BBzb8L, and find out more at http://amzn.to/1DF99Dv.
I really enjoyed
creating Sara and Leo’s passion in the sun. As a result, I’ve never written a
book so quickly. It was a shame to type “The End”, so when my Beta reader asked
me what I thought would happen to King Leo’s personal assistant Krisia in her
challenging new job, I had a flash of inspiration. I’d use this book as a springboard for
others. And so the Princes
of Kharova
series was born.
Holding Out For A Hero
In His Majesty’s
Secret Passion,
career-woman Sara and Leo, King of Kharova, develop a successful working
relationship, and turn their emotional fireworks into a co-ordinated display.
Krisia the PA is promoted out of the king’s life, disappearing to sort out the
chaotic paper-trails left by Leo’s charismatic younger brother, Prince Athan.
Their story forms the basis of Her
Royal Risk, which
will be published later this year.
Looking Forward To The Past
Before putting finger to
keyboard to start writing His
Majesty’s Secret Passion, I’d
filled out character sheets for both Sara and Leo. These catalogue every snippet of information
about my characters, from their physical appearance, to their position in the
family birth order (If you’d like a copy of these useful forms, email me at
christinahollis(at)hotmail.co,uk with the words Character Sheet in the subject
line).
Using Scrivener (you can
read more about that at http://bit.ly/1sWLNUs)
I created a central store of these completed character sheets, together with
timelines, and the images and notes collected while I worked. This meant I
could keep tabs on my characters appearances—both physical, and where they pop
up in the story. It makes checking continuity easy.
King Leo wants to
modernize his country, the fictional Kharova, which is still suffering from the
fall-out of a family rift generations before.
I drew up a family tree based on this, then went back to His Majesty’s
Secret Passion and
copied every snippet of information about Krisia and King Leo’s younger brother
Prince Athan into a new character spreadsheet. Then I pasted in all the details
about Sara and Leo too, which gave me the basis of a series bible. This helped
me keep track of everyone’s appearance, their likes and dislikes, friends,
relationships, and their respective timelines. This was important, as the
events in some of the four books overlap.
Beginning, Middle And
Happy-Ever-After...
At this point I decided
the mending of a broken family would be the overarching theme for my series.
Each novel in the Princes
Of Kharova series
is a complete romance in its own right. Leo, his brother, sister and a
pretender to the throne of Kharova each have a book to themselves. While
they’re involved in finding their soul mate, there are hints of what is to come
for the whole family. In the same way, their country of Kharova moves from war
to peace.
...And After...
I loved writing the Princes of
Kharova series, but it would have been a lot easier to
commit to writing a series from the start. When I wrote His Majesty’s
Secret Passion, I
never expected Leo’s sister, Princess Maia, and rebel leader Mihail Dukagjini
to come into contact. They had other ideas, and in Heart Of A Hostage (Book Three), they have a
torrid affair. It’s never a good idea to have the names of characters begin
with the same letter—there are twenty-five other letters to choose from, after
all!—but it’s too late now for Maia and Mihail. And “Dukagjini” is a great
surname for a minor character, but a hero shouldn’t be saddled with such a
tongue-twister.
Have you written a
series? Did you find it harder to say goodbye to characters when they’d
appeared in more than one of your books?
A comment picked at random after 10th February will win a copy of His Majesty’s Secret Passion.
Christina Hollis
writes contemporary fiction starring complex men and independent women–when she
isn't cooking, gardening or beekeeping. Her books have been translated into
more than a dozen languages, and she’s sold nearly three million books
worldwide. You can catch up with her at http://www.christinahollis.blogspot.com, on Twitter, Facebook, and see
a full list of her published books at http://www.christinahollis.com. Her
current release, His
Majesty's Secret Passion,
is published by Wild Rose Press on 4th February, and is available from http://amzn.to/1DF99Dv (UK) and http://bit.ly/1ujX5zc (US)
Thank you so much for this informative blog post, Christina.
The RNA blog is brought to you by
Elaine Everest & Natalie Kleinman
If you would like to write an article for the blog or have a book due to be published please contact us on elaineeverest@aol.com
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