Long, Deep, but Quick! Guest post by Posy Roberts

The challenges of writing a series are many. One of the hardest parts is finding the mojo to keep on going. Another is to remember all the little details ages after your head has been away from your story.

I thought I’d avoided these two struggles by writing North Star all at once. But the details to remember when writing over 300,000 words are daunting. I set up story arcs in book 1, Spark, that aren’t going to be concluded until book 3, Flare (released January 13^th).

Fusion was released this week. This is the second book in my trilogy, and it is the entire reason I wrote this series in the first place. I had a friend tell me some awful news that got me plotting a story as we walked around the lake a few springs ago. I knew the story couldn’t start where Fusion does, so I wrote a lot of backstory in Spark.

I ended up writing so much backstory of Kevin Magnus and Hugo Thorson’s teen love story, that I was able to adapt portions of Spark and add a whole lot more to their story to be released as a Young Adult title. Private Display of Affection will be released by Harmony Ink Press December 12th, and I’m even considering writing another book to follow up on that and to cover Kevin and Hugo’s senior year in high school. So what started out as three very carefully planned books has now blown up into five.

As N.R. and anyone else who has written a series knows, it can be far more challenging than writing a stand alone book. It’s wonderful to be able to go farther and deeper with these characters though. I almost feel as if they are very close friends.

I’ve even had pre-readers and editors ask a question or two about something that happened these books, and I could write paragraphs on the thought process behind my Hugo’s reasoning. It’s crazy! It’s wonderful! I have loved getting so fully immersed in these characters’ minds.

And yet, I’m very much aware of what it’s like being a reader of a series or a trilogy. I remember waiting years between Harry Potter books. For some it was easy to put the story out of my mind, but for other books, it was nearly impossible.

That’s why I wrote North Star all at once and submitted the novel in quick succession with my publisher. I didn’t want to make readers wait. I also didn’t want to lose my motivation or get too far away from Kevin and Hugo. I’m already going to have a hell of a time letting Hugo go. I think I’ve fallen for him, and if he weren’t gay, I’d be hitting up every drag club and theater in Minneapolis looking for my fictional character.

So if you don’t like to wait, you don’t have very long to wait with North Star. Spark and Fusion are already out there waiting for you to read them. Flare will be coming in less than two months.

Squee! I can’t wait for them all to be in print. I’m so excited to take a photo of all three books side by side. That will be a wonderful day for me to see this seed of an idea come to life in actual books.

God I love being a writer!

How do you tell your friends and family you’ve fallen in love with a man when they’ve only ever known you as straight? How do you explain to your kids that you loved their mother very much, but your new partner is your best friend from high school?

Kevin Magnus must figure it out while trying to build a relationship with Hugo Thorson, whose bigger than life, out-and-proud drag queen persona is simply too big to be contained in a closet—even for the time it takes Kevin to come up with an explanation for his kids and Erin, his soon-to-be ex-wife.

But Erin faces an even bigger obstacle—one that shakes the entire family to the core. When she unexpectedly turns to Hugo, they form a connection that forces Hugo to grow up and offers Kevin the chance to become the kind of father he wants to be. Despite the coming complications, they’ll all benefit from a fortunate side effect: it becomes clear that Hugo is very much a part of this unconventional family.

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