Thinking Ahead

While most of you are just getting acquainted with Chaos Magic (or at least I hope you are), I'm doing preliminary work on the next novel. (working title is Love Runes). One of the challenges of working on a series, as I'm finding out, is how do you show your characters have changed without losing what made them who they are? It takes a tremendous amount of emotional energy to write Sam. It's kind of like being a method actor, because while he's having one of his meltdowns, I'm right there with him, experiencing it. When you read a chapter, it might take you a day. It takes me a month to write it. That's a long time to be in that head space. Thank goodness Sam won't be as much of a train wreck this time around. But as long as Sam and Hector are working out their issues, there's going to be drama. At the end of this story Sam will be where he needs to be for the third book. He'll be changed, more mature, more confident, and hopefully easier to write - but I promise he'll still be Sam.