If you've been reading along with these, you'll know that I decided to write my first novel on the tail end of a joke that turned out to be a lot more serious than I originally meant it. In fact, my best things happen by accident. So it was that after writing a terrible picture book based on the time in real life that I got in trouble for hiding behind a set of trees on the kindergarten playground and missing the recess bell, I accidentally wrote a middle grade series. Maybe you're wondering an author accidentally writes a series or how a picture book turns into four middle grade books. Or maybe you've read enough of my blog to be nodding along and understanding that this is how life works for me.
Well, I started expanding that far too long picture book and low and behold ended up with 50,000 words and a new problem. I didn't immediately recognize that the world I'd built needed more of an explanation or it didn't make sense. Unfortunately, I queried that book on a small scale before I figured out that problem. Thank you Maura Jortner for asking all of the right questions that led me to write the first book in that series. And the third one that I believe you mentioned needed to be two books. Basically, thank you for helping me tell a really long story that I love dearly. And that is how I accidentally wrote my very first series.
I'd love to tell you that it was also the last time I wrote a series accidentally, but it's not. It happened again in a totally different way when a book that was supposed to be a sequel turned two stand alones into books one and two in a trilogy. At least that time I recognized the need to make it a series at the beginning of the third book and I'm happy with the results. I hope to share all of those books here in the future, but that's another step further down this crazy publishing journey.