Wednesday, June 06, 2012

The End of a Series

Last Blood is the fifth and final book of the House of Comarre series. I'm currently working on it, pushing closer to The End every day and even though these are fictional characters set in a fictional world, I feel like I'm beginning to grieve. A strange emotion to associate with writing a book, but there it is.

Is feeling that way weird? Maybe, but consider that I started writing Blood Rights, the first book, in the summer of 2008. Four years, one novella and five books later, saying goodbye is understandably difficult. At times my relationship with these characters and this world has been love/hate. There are moments in these books that feel like triumphs and yet, some of the details written in earlier books caused me to make decisions in later ones that I might not have otherwise made. Some days felt like slogging through mud and some days like flying. (And those flying days? Those are the days writers live for.)

Such is the writing process when you commit yourself to basically writing a story that is five books long, because that's how these books work. You should really consider books 1-5 all parts of the same story, just broken down into manageable chunks.

Maybe some of what I'm feeling isn't grief, but exhaustion. *grin* It's tough writing something this long and this involved. These characters and plotlines show up in my dreams, pop into my head when I'm supposed to be thinking about other things and distract me daily from the most mundane aspects of life. They have become...part of me. And wow, just writing that sounds a little too precious, but there it is.

Have you as a writer ever felt like this? As a reader, what do you feel when you read the last book in a series?

4 comments:

  1. The last book of the series is always sad. I am sad to see a series end, yet I love a good ending! Sometimes I feel like the characters do deserve a break, an ending. What with the hell they go through in the writing! (But I still LOVE Reading about it!)

    I'm an aspiring author myself, although the series I have in mind is a bit different than the standard.

    But as a reader, I love for the story to go on as long as possible. Some series do get to the point where they kind of drag and I don't want to see that happen with series I love.

    So while the ending is sad, I am happy that the characters are (hopefully) going to get their HEA ending!

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  2. Hi! Just dropping by to say that there's currently a Liebster Blogging Award going around, encouraging up and coming bloggers with less than 200 followers. If you'd like to find out more, here is a link to the post: http://rissabooks.blogspot.com.au/2012_06_01_archive.html
    Feel free to ignore if you wish. :) P.S. I've only read Blood Rights but it's by far on my top 10 favourite novels of all time.

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  3. It may sound silly, but I end up a little devastated when I come to the end of a series. You invest so much time in the characters and their world, it is hard to say that final goodbye.

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  4. Just wondering: Do you have any plans for "after" the end of this series?
    A complete new series or a series that plays in the same world but has different main characters or...

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