I've been working on the outlines for the Beverlee Hills Mummy Trilogy. Right now, I have three books separated into three seasons each: fall, winter, and spring (following the school year) with summer being summarized or referred to. But, I'm working on the story beats for the flashbacks and they could all be their own books, so I'm wondering if I should re-expand the series. I initially was planning for twenty books but that ended up feeling daunting, so I shortened it to a trilogy. JUST a thought exercise, I'm going to CONSIDER turning it back into a longer series.
I was thinking that because I want to explore Nakia's life after high school. Not "the college years" so much as the transition into The Rift. Nakia gets maybe a book to come fully into her own and then Aura shows up and is like, "hey, your old god/king is trying to rip the world into four pieces, and I need your lush in order to save it." Nakia has to come to terms with her mortality -- again -- but it's not even that easy, because we'll need four anchors, one on each mini-planet, kind of like magnets that can be flipped to bring the worlds back together at some point.
The four will be Aura, Nakia, The King, and...maybe Coral? Oooh, or Darcy! Darcy would be interesting. She's Aura's birth mother. So, to bring the worlds back together, Nakia would have to work with The King and Aura would have to work with Darcy. That MAY be a bit too much drama. Other contenders of existing characters are Coral and Tom, but we could also make Lush (the AI avatar herself) the fourth? We'll see.
Anyway, I thought it might be too tragic for Nakia to finally have a real life only to have it ripped away again, but she's not like a battered kid who grew up wanting a spouse and 2.5 kids and a white picket fence. She just wanted to be comfortable in her own skin and a solid sense of belonging, whatever that looks like. She also has a bit of a savior complex, so as long as she gets to keep her friends, I think she'll be okay.
Okay, let's get into the extended series. First, if each season of each year (fall, winter, spring) is a book, that brings us to nine books. Then, if we follow her around for another three years (one normal, chill year), one leading up to The Rift, and one after The Rift, would that be three more books or nine more books? Let's examine that.
The reason each season should be one book in the main body of the series is because we're exploring the flashbacks (Egypt, Atlantis, and Havenford) in detail as well as dealing with a full house staff and the Jackie storyline. So, assuming Nakia spends less time living in the past, she is in college and doesn't have her staff anymore, and we're not following Jacki around, the books won't need to be as long.
BUT, do we WANT all of those things? AND, even if we don't, won't Nakia have new friends and new experiences that we could fill a book with? We also want to keep an eye on the girls. And, it's not much of a tragedy for Nakia to lose the life she's building if it's not currently important to her. I do want it to still hurt. And even if Nakia is flexible with what the world looks like, this is going to be incredibly destructive for the people in her life. It would be interesting, too, to see the different levels of damage done to rich people versus working class and poor.
Also, frankly, I the Afterlife scenes are some of my favorite, and don't necessarily want to drop that just because we don't like The King right now. We can also get more nuance on Ahmose's character, follow Jacki's hijinks, and meet new people.
Okay, you've convinced me. Let's make the three years after high school one book per season. However, unlike high school, I think we definitely need summer included. Summer is kind of a lost season when you're in school (it was for me, anyway, but that's probably because I didn't have friends), but in adult life, you don't get three-month vacations from your obligations. So, that would be twelve more books on top of the nine. That's twenty-one. Hm. That's even more than I originally intended to write.
Although, originally, I wanted this to be a never-ending series like Sweet Valley High except with a linear storyline instead of all standalone books. Also, what if we DID include summer in the base series? Then we'd have twelve books for the base series and twelve books for the sequel series. OR, should we have three prequels, three bases, and three sequels? That would be thirty six, if we did one book per season, per year.
I don't know if I want a prequel series, though. Yes, we could give each flashback its own series, but those stories are so grim and are used as a basis to contrast with Nakia's new life. If I WAS going to do a prequel series, it would follow around Thai, China, Candy, and Ophelia. Hm. Okay, I kind of like that. If we explore their friendship pre-accident and directly after, writing about it in the base series, we'd have a lot more information to pull from to make the world feel lived in. Each season could be written from the POV of one of the girls, too.
Okay, so I'm writing an outline for thirty-six books, instead of three. To be honest, this is about how many I wanted to write anyway. I only lowered it to three because that sounded achievable. For now, I'm going to finish the outline for the three. I have Book 1 mapped out, am mostly done with Book 2, and have a bit of Book 3 done. All that happens if I do expand the series is that the outline of the three books becomes an outline for nine books and we just fill in plot and character development.
I will say that I'm far more confident in writing a compelling trilogy than a hexatriacontalogy. Thirty-six books sounds like I'm trying to get away with filler but the truth is that I think I just have that much story, if not more.
Okay, good talk.
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