When I first came up for the idea of a Mystery novel, I was not thinking about creating a series. But as I wrote it, I began to think about it quite a bit. The genre lends itself to the long running series. My programmer sleuth, Joshua Jones has some interesting issues that I only scratched the surface of in that first novel. In later drafts of the book, I clearly dropped hints of a larger story about his background.
In coming up with a series wide story arc, I have decided that there should be six books in the series. How did I come up with that number? I just figured that the story could not reach longer than six books. Not to mention the fact that I don’t see myself writing the same characters for longer than six years without getting bored with them or having exhausted their uniqueness.
Have I mapped out each of the six books yet? Yes and no. I have titles, oddly enough. And I have a big picture outline of the overall story arc. Which is really, really important. But aside from some pretty cool titles, I don’t have plots mapped for each of the four books after Kill Dash Nine. What are the titles, you ask? Here they are:
Null_Pointer, Kill Dash Nine, Return False, Batch Kill, Segfault, and Zero Day
You should right now put a reminder in your calendar to come back and read this particular post 6 years from now. B-) You never know, this might actually take off like some of those other mystery series where the author tried to quit but reader’s clamor fueled more in the series count than planned.