I remember very distinctly the first couple of times I mentioned to another author that I had just sold a second series to Ace/Roc. There were looks. Not looks of envy – oh no. It was more of a have-you-gone-completely-barkers thing. Which, it turns out, was not an unreasonable question.
The thing is, I have a full-time day job. A busy one, which requires a lot of “overtime” and international travel. This month, for example, has put me in New York, Brussels, Amsterdam, Nairobi, and Istanbul.* When I am home, it’s in a place where life is not exactly convenient. For one, electricity is not a given. You could spend your precious Saturdays tossing everything out of a now-useless refrigerator. Or putting out fires in your electrical sockets. Or tooling around town looking for a store that still has milk on its shelves, to replace what you lost during the two-day blackout.** This is sub-optimal, from a time management point of view. Seen in this light, contractually obliging oneself to churn out two books a year does begin to look a bit barmy.
Especially since it’s not as though you can just type “The End” on one and roll straight into “Prologue” on the next. You need time to rest. To restock the creative shelves. And most importantly, to transport yourself to a different world.
The Nicolas Lenoir series and the Bloodbound series could hardly be more different in content and tone. The Lenoir mysteries are dark and intimate, while the Bloodbound is sweeping and heroic. Nicolas Lenoir is a brooding anti-hero, while the cast of the Bloodbound is really a likeable bunch of folks. There’s an important love triangle in the Bloodbound; imagining Lenoir in a romance is… no.
What that all boils down to is that shifting gears between the two is not always that easy. Especially in the early chapters, I find myself tripping over tone quite a bit. One of the essential features of the Bloodbound is its brisk pace and lean prose. Having just come off Book 2 in the Lenoir series, I found myself cluttering the next Bloodbound book with murky patches of brooding or rich, atmospheric descriptions that just didn’t belong. Happily, it only took a few chapters to work out the kinks, and I was able to go back and streamline things.
For a while, at least, and then Lenoir started poking his nose back into my business, as police inspectors are wont to do. The handover from one book to the next isn’t a one-time deal. The writing process is an iterative one, and typing “The End” on a first draft is only the first step. There are editorial notes and revisions, copyedits and page proofs, cover art and cover copy, publicity – a million things that impose themselves on the writing of the next book. Each and every one of them represents a rupture, a moment when I have to yank myself out of one world to re-immerse myself in another. There is only one fix for this, and that’s time – hitting the pause button to let your insides recalibrate. Time, though, is in shorter supply than milk around here.
There are other quirks that come along with managing two series as well. For one, I have two different names: EL Tettensor for Lenoir, Erin Lindsey for Bloodbound. Two names means two brands, with two websites, and… well, you get the idea. This has some definite upsides. For instance, it allows my websites to become much more immersive experiences, since they’re tailored to the series, not the author. It also gives me a shot at a potentially wider audience, since these series appeal to very different readerships. My hope is that once a loyal following is built for one, a chunk of them will be interested in crossing over to the other. The potential downside is that even if someone loved Darkwalker, having a different name on the cover of The Bloodbound means that readers won’t necessarily realise it’s the same author, and so won’t give the book the benefit of the doubt.
On balance, though, it’s a challenge I’m up for, and four books in, I can’t imagine having it any other way. It lets me play in two sandboxes at the same time, and really, who hasn’t fantasised about being in two places at once?
*This may sound glamorous. It is not.
** This may sound charmingly exotic. It is not.
ABOUT
Erin Lindsey is on a quest to write the perfect summer vacation novel, with just the right blend of action, heartbreak, and triumph. The Bloodbound is her first effort. She lives and works in Bujumbura, Burundi, with her husband and a pair of half-domesticated cats.
She also writes fantasy mysteries as E.L. Tettensor.
Visit http://www.erin-lindsey.com/ to learn more about the books in the The Bloodbound series or http://eltettensor.com/ to learn more about the Nicholas Lenior novels.
