Guest Post David N. Alderman My Love For Series

[Giovanni Gelati]

When I put in the time to read a book, I find that I can really only get to the end of it if I’ve fallen in love, to some degree, with the characters, the plot, or both. There is the rare occasion where I will finish the book - or want to finish the book - simply because I’ve invested so much into it, but those instances are few and far between. The characters are usually the ones who carry me through because most of what I write is centered around character development, so it’s only natural I would lean towards the same in my reading habits.

My love for character development has also led me toward novel series more than stand alone books. I think my love for novel series started with my favorite books of all time, The Han Solo Trilogy by A.C. Crispin. The three books in this series - The Paradise Snare, The Hutt Gambit, and Rebel Dawn -captivated me during my senior year of high school back in 1997 and still does to this day.

I actually get pretty disappointed if I get to the end of a great book after having fallen in love with the characters, and find out there are no plans to continue said character’s adventures in follow-up books. There are exceptions to this of course. Some books are just meant to be stand alone – The Book of Lost Things by John Connolly and Tosca Lee’s Demon: A Memoir come to mind – and some characters end on such a high (or low) note, you really don’t want to see what they would do next because it might taint that special moment when they walked out the back of the book, only hinting at what they were going to do next.

One book I will never forget – and still hope will someday spur sequels – is Starcraft Ghost: Nova by Keith R.A. DeCandido. Nova, the female protagonist in the book, is one of my favorite fictional female characters. The book itself is based on a video game that was created but never distributed, so I guess it makes some sense that more books won’t be made, but I was still sad to see I wouldn’t be able to continue reading about Nova and her adventures.

My obsession with series really began to take off with The Guardians of Time trilogy by Marianne Curley and Ted Dekker’s Circle Trilogy. Currently, I am in the middle of The Dark Tower series by Stephen King, hoping to get through all seven books someday soon. On my shelf at the moment, I have dozens of other books to read and review, including The Night Angel Trilogy by Brent Weeks, Star Wars: Coruscant Nights series by Michael Reaves, and the Bourne novels by Robert Ludlum.

I guess this obsession has spilled into my writing life because I can’t seem to write any fiction that doesn’t somehow, some way, correlate with my own sci-fi/fantasy series, Black Earth, or my upcoming young adult series, Expired Reality.

What series have you enjoyed reading? Was there ever a book you read that you wished would have continued on into a series?

David Alderman is the full-time, self-published author of the science fiction/fantasy series, Black Earth. You can find out more about Black Earth and his writing talents at:

www.davidnalderman.com www.abrokenreality.blogspot.com

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