Being Unfaithful (To Fictional Characters)

There is a little known saying, that goes like: 'Nothing sells a good book like a second good book, and nothing makes money like three good books.' A saying that Steig Larsson would probably whole heartedly agree with, if his heart had not so inconveniently failed him as his books went global.

Money, force of will and smart marketing will get a book attention in the short term, but for it to be successful it needs to be good. To make money it needs siblings. Modern reading minds love series characters. If they like one book, they will typically work their way through them all. It is therefore to series characters I aim. But I do not want to be tied to one series. I do have the outline for the second Sarah Sawacki book, sat on my hard drive. I am very excited about it too. As nobody really knows about Sarah at this moment in time, what better time to start another series.

So we busily make book two. I'd say write, but the ideal of playing a computer keyboard like some concert pianist and producing four effortless brilliant pages a day, is a long way from reality. So I make, I think of it more as paper-mache using words. The idea for my second series character occurred about two thirds of the way through writing the first. So we are talking 2009. This in contrast was about a man. He would be a man that women like and men understand. A very hard man with heart, a lost soul trying to understand why the most precious thing in his life has been ripped from him.

I wrote about 30,000 words of this, just under one third, after I had written Chasing Innocence. It then sat in the digital draw for two years while I edited and polished and eventually published Chasing Innocence. During the publishing stage I started working on TMWWRWs again (it's an acronym for the books title). This started as an edit and eventually became writing the book. It was slow work because publishing your own book takes a lot of time and energy. I was getting in about 4-6 hours a week. Now Chasing Innocence is out there and much of what I can do is out of my hands, I have about 4 hours a day to write. Hoorah.

Except something is different. It feels odd. I'm very excited about Marcus Hangiman and his journey, and during the hiatus came up with a whole bunch of very good ideas. I'm as excited as I was starting Sarah's journey, and a little more comfortable because I know a little more of what I should be doing. But somehow, having had Sarah Sawacki in my life for four years now, it feels like I am being unfaithful to her, by writing about somone else. It is a very weird feeling. Even when I was writing TMWWRWs the first time, Sarah and how I could progress her story was always in the back of my mind. But now it's all over for a while, it's a bit like selfishly going off with someone else knowing this character will be waiting when I'm done. It is a feeling similar to the one that makes you finish a book, which is the very strong allegiance you have to your characters. You want to finish the story for them. I suspect that is what will drive the completion of this book too. The need to tell this first part of Marcus' story, the excitement of publishing it and the thrill of saying hello to Sarah once more.