Binge reading…
Binge reading is fun, and it’s even more fun when you do it with a series. Recently I binged on Bernett’s Kirby/Longdon mystery series, Febry’s rural mystery series, and am currently on Grace’s Kate Redman series—there are enough books in the latter that I probably can’t finish them before 2020, but they’ll be waiting for me then. (Note added during publication: Some books in the Kate Redman series are a bit expensive for my reading budget. I recently discovered J. R. Ellis’s Yorkshire mysteries, which are a real bargain…and fantastic mysteries. I’ll get back to Celina Grace, I’m sure.)
A good series allows a reader to jump in anywhere, of course. I binged on the first two in order; for the third, I’m (was) jumping around a bit. (And I’m now reading J. R.’s books in order.) All these books can be read independently, though, and they don’t contain that eighth deadly sin, cliffhangers.
I know some readers insist on reading a series in order (reviewers often get hung up on that too). Obviously authors write them that way, although my mystery/thriller The Midas Bomb changed considerably in going from first edition to second to match the rest of the series. As more novels are published in a series, the principal characters develop—a series fails if that is not the case. But the stories are what’s important, so it’s also fun to read a later book and then backtrack to read a previous one. With a prequel, an author formalizes that kind of reading.
I cheated on Son of Thunder. Yes, the “Esther Brookstone Art Detective Series” is a spin-off from my “Detectives Chen and Castilblanco Series,” but Son of Thunder is both a prequel and sequel to Rembrandt’s Angel. Okay, maybe it wasn’t cheating, just a trick played on readers who want to binge on a series by reading it in order. And, by the way, I’m already working on the third Esther Brookstone novel. Maybe I’ll pull some more rabbits out of the hat with that one too.
You see, a lot of my scientific work dealt with nonlinear phenomena. Engineers love to linearize everything, but Nature isn’t linear. It’s much more complex. Bat chirps are nonlinear signals that scientists (engineers reluctantly?) have learned to mimic for radars. Nonlinear equations create fractals; rogue waves in the ocean are nonlinear phenomena. And so forth. Why should a book series…or even the plot of one novel…be linear? Life itself isn’t linear, and fiction should seem as real as life.
Maybe some readers find it confusing if they don’t read a series in order. They’ll probably dislike what I did in Son of Thunder. In the prequel parts, they’ll learn more about Esther’s past as an MI6 spy in East Germany. They’ll also visit the first century and the Renaissance and see their influences on Esther’s quest to find St. John’s tomb. I don’t do simple. Life is too complex, and I want my novels to reflect that complexity.
But back to the series I binged on. They’re complex. They’re full of back story, for example, as I learn about a character’s past or past events. Flashbacks and back story are nonlinear phenomena. They give complexity to even just one novel, and they’re necessary to maintain the flow of a series. I look for that in my reading, and I practice that in my writing.
So go ahead, binge, even if you’re looking for complexity. A good series won’t put you into a formulaic rut. Look for those good series and binge away!
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Comments are always welcome.
Evergreen Series. The “Detectives Chen and Castilblanco Series” is an ideal candidate for series binging. Dao-Ming Chen and Rolando Castilblanco are two NYPD homicide detectives whose cases in the Big Apple often have national and international repercussions. Chen and Castilblanco have different backgrounds and different motivations, but they form a dynamic crime-fighting duo that bad guys fear. Start with The Midas Bomb that begins with two murders and introduces the arch-villain Vladimir Kalinin, an evil hedge fund operator who wants to exploit both terrorism and illegal immigrants in his evil and greedy agenda. Like all evergreen books, the books in this series and others of mine are as current as the day I wrote them, if not more so. Wall Street abuses and immigrant exploitation are but two examples. The entire series is available on both Amazon and Smashwords and wherever ebooks are sold.
Around the world and to the stars! In libris libertas!
