How Long Is Too Long?

I have a confession to make. I rarely make it to the end of a series, whether it’s a television show or a book. I loved Mad Men, but never saw the final season. Hill Street Blues is one of my favorite shows of all time, but I bailed somewhere during the next-to-the-last season. I never saw the final season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I simply lost interest. I quit on Northern Exposure after Joel went native and they brought in new lead characters. And these are just a few examples.

Books, too. It’s rare for me to get past the third book in a series, even if I thoroughly enjoyed those first three. Sorry, gang.

There are exceptions, of course. I happily stayed with Better Call Saul through six seasons, all the way to the end, and every season was better than the one before. I was in on Justified all the way through and loved all six seasons of that show, too. Too bad they had to mess up a good thing with the abysmal Justified: A City Primeval, but I don’t count it as a continuation of the original series. I’ve powered my way through all 17 of the Dresden books, although I have to admit that I stopped being excited by them after Book 6, and I doubt I’ll read any more of them when they come out.

But the exceptions are rare. What I’ve found mostly is that a series either becomes repetitious, changes for the worse, jumps the shark, or simply becomes dull.

Which brings me to my dilemma.

When I wrote A Troll Walks into a Bar: A Noir Urban Fantasy, featuring Alexander Southerland, P.I., I figured it would be a one-off, and possibly the only book I’d ever write. But I enjoyed the experience, and, gradually, after many months, the book found an audience. And then one morning, as I was adding a pinch of cinnamon to the coffee I was making for my wife, Rita, I got an idea for another Southerland adventure. A Witch Steps into My Office was the easiest book I’ve ever written. After thinking about some new characters and discussing them with Rita, the whole story popped into my head all at once while I was on my morning run, and I wrote it from beginning to end over 12 weeks with few revisions.

Now I had a book and a sequel, but in my mind it’s not truly a series until you’ve got a Book 3. So I wrote A Hag Rises from the Abyss with the intention of ending the Southerland series as a trilogy of stories. Trilogies are magical, after all. Lord of the Rings was a trilogy. Three books seemed like a good place to stop.

Except that my backstory of elves and Dragon Lords, originally offered in A Troll Walks into a Bar as atmosphere to flesh out Southerland’s world, was only just beginning to take shape, and I wanted to resolve it. So I started writing A Night Owl Slips into a Diner with the intention of bringing the backstory to the foreground and arriving at some sort of conclusion.

But that’s not what happened. Instead, my backstory gained complexity and begged for further development. After writing The Demon’s Dagger as a standalone novella featuring a side character from the Southerland series in a lead role, I set about writing Southerland, Book 5. This one, I felt, would definitely be the last book of the series. Five books was the most I thought I could sustain a series without, you know, repeating myself, changing things for the worse, jumping the shark, or becoming dull. Or worse: losing interest in the story myself. I decided to revisit the adaros, bring back Ten-Inch from Book 1, and wrap it all up. The title of the book was going to be An Elf Checks into a Hotel, and we’d all finally find out what the mysterious elf was up to with all his scheming against the Dragon Lords. This would certainly bring all the loose ends in the Southerland series to a satisfying conclusion.

But it didn’t. Instead, the book centered on those adaros, and a couple of them took over the story. An Elf Checks into a Hotel became A Nymph Returns to the Sea, and, in the end, it left some threads wide open. I found that I still had another Southerland mystery in me, neatly set up by the conclusion of Nymph. Cindy Shipper (from Witch) made a cameo in Nymph, and that was going to be the key element to tie all of the loose threads together in the next book. Book 6 would be An Elf Checks into a Hotel, and that would be it. Six books—a double trilogy! Six books, I felt, was a good number. After all, Better Call Saul had lasted for six seasons. So had Justified.

I started writing Book 6 and got sidetracked from my main plot idea within two pages. An intriguing subplot overwhelmed my original idea for the book, and the story went off in a direction I hadn’t anticipated. An Elf Checks into a Hotel became The Blood Moon Feeds on My Dreams, and the conclusion of the story left me eager and excited to write a Book 7. Seven books, I thought, wasn’t too many, right? Not if I was still jazzed about it.

But seven had to be it. Seven was pushing it. It was all I had, and it was time to move on from Southerland. I had an idea for another series, one set in the same world as the Southerland books, but featuring a brand new lead character in a different city. I couldn’t wait to move on from Southerland’s stories in the world I’d created and start exploring a different part of that world. In fact, I decided to introduce the new character in Southerland, Book 7, which would then act as a neat transition into my new series. This, I thought, was a brilliant idea!

I began Book 7: An Elf Checks into a Hotel.

It was working! I knew where it was going to end and how I was going to get there. I got 70,000 words into it, with two intertwining subplots, and a clear path to the concluding scene.

That’s when I realized my two intertwining subplots were refusing to intertwine. Which meant I had not one, but two works in progress. Which, of course, meant that I was going to have two books.

I excised one of the subplots and set it aside. I focused on the other subplot, and it’s coming along nicely. Southerland, Book 7 will now be called A Specter Raps on My Windowpane. It will NOT be the final book in the series. It will be followed by Book 8, which will be called—you guessed it—An Elf Checks into a Hotel. It should follow close on the heels of Book 7, because it’s already about a quarter of the way finished. And, after all, eight books aren’t all THAT many…. Right?

But that will be it. Eight is enough! I can’t possibly come up with another new idea for Southerland without getting repetitious, jumping the shark, etc., etc.

Unless……..