Part #3 of our chat with @Reese Ryan LUV: You write a lot of connected stories like the Valentine Vineyards or Bourbon Brothers. What is the appeal? Are there particular challenges? Reese: I discovered the value of connected books after getting my first contract to write Making the First Move for Carina Press ten years ago. I was offered a second contract for a secondary character who’d kind of stole the show. But in Making the First Move, that character, Jamie Charles, had already met her soulmate, Miles. So Jamie’s story, Love Me Not, is the second book in the series, but happens first chronologically. That experience taught me to always, always think of the possible connections between stories and series and how I could use that to my advantage in a way that readers would also really enjoy. I love writing connected stories because it gives readers familiar characters to follow and reconnect with. It also provides familiar spaces that readers will want to revisit. Connected stories allow me to play the long game in setting up a character like Cole Abbott whose story A Bad Boy Experiment is the final planned book in my Bourbon Brothers series. It also gives the readers a chance to follow a character like Savannah from Savannah’s Secrets—Book One of the series. I’m a big believer in a strong secondary cast of characters. We aren’t born in a vacuum and our characters shouldn’t be either. These ongoing characters make great friends, enemies, allies, mentors, and vehicles that move another character’s story forward. And it’s fun to carry over elements of these stories to other projects. For instance, in the Moonlight Ridge trilogy I did with Joss Wood and Karen Booth, my character Travis drinks bourbon from the King’s Finest Distillery at the center of the Bourbon Brothers series. At the end of A Bad Boy Experiment we discover that the Abbotts have previously unknown relatives, which gives birth to the Valentine Vineyards series. Novellas like The Rival Bid, Candidly Yours, and Baby Be Mine connect back to my Pleasure Cove series. And in my Holly Grove Island series, Pleasure Cove gets a mention as a rival luxury hotel is located there. The one challenge of writing connected series is keeping all of the details straight. Is the bakery next door to the coffee shop or are they the same place? Did this character have straight or curly hair? Is this character taller than that one? What was this side character’s brother’s name? Because it becomes important when he gets his own story. And how old is everyone now anyway? LOL. If you’re thinking of writing a series or connected stories, make yourself a series bible from the beginning. You’ll thank me later, seriously.

Posted by LUV Team at 2023-03-29 14:00:01 UTC