Saying Goodbye

As a reader, one of the things I love is finding a really good series of books. When you fall in love with a set of characters, it's wonderful to follow their development over multiple books because there is so much more scope to develop their personal stories when they are spread out over a longer period of time. The flip side of this of course, is that when you finally reach the end, it is much harder to say goodbye because you have spent so much longer with the characters - in some cases, years - than you ordinarily would.

What makes it worse, in my opinion, is when the series ends prematurely, because the author has died. In this instance, not only are you mourning the loss of the characters, but also the brilliant mind which created them. This was brought home to me recently when I saw someone post on social media that they had always received a new Terry Pratchett for Christmas and when his final book, 'The Shepherd's Crown' was published, they had been given it as usual, but they had never been able to bring themselves to read it, because they knew it would be the last time they would read a Discworld book for the first time. This year, they said they finally felt ready to open the book. Although it didn't take me as long, I completely understood both their feelings and their logic, because I felt the same. I was introduced to the Discworld as teenager in the mid-1990s, so by the time 'The Shepherd's Crown' was posthumously published in 2015, the books had been a part of my life for over 20 years. For other fans, it had been much longer. I think the book would have made me cry anyway, but knowing that I was saying goodbye not just to one character, but to all of them, definitely heightened the emotion.

I think it also makes a huge difference if you know the series is complete before you start reading it. L.M. Montgomery was long dead before I ever picked up 'Anne of Green Gables' and the series is written to ensure that there is a very definite ending. By the final pages of the last book, 'Rilla of Ingleside', Anne's youngest child has been paired off with her future husband and Anne and Gilbert can begin to look forward to the next generation of Blythes. I knew before I started reading that we were always heading towards that final book and consequently, I was prepared for the ending when it came.

By contrast, I came to Kerry Greenwood's Phryne Fisher series and Elizabeth Peters' Amelia Peabody books much later in life and when I started reading them, both authors were alive and writing with every indication that the series would continue indefinitely. Unfortunately, Peters died in 2013, leaving her final book, 'The Painted Queen' to be completed by another author. Similarly, when Greenwood passed away in 2025, while still editing her final book, 'Murder In The Cathedral'. It has been published and is on my TBR pile for this year, but I suspect that there will be a sense of unfinished business once I have read it. The idea that Phryne and the Peabody-Emersons are out there somewhere having adventures, but no longer with anyone to document them, is hard to accept.

Nevertheless, despite knowing how hard I find it to say goodbye to fictional characters I have fallen in love with, it still took me a little by surprise when it happened to me in my writing life. 'Silver Darling' was originally supposed to be the last in the Avonstow series, but even before I started writing it, I knew I wasn't ready to say goodbye to some of the characters. I also knew that I wanted to try my hand at cosy crime and so it made sense to combine the two and set my cosy crime series in the Avonstow universe. Consequently, I introduced Lady Violet Thyrnton as a friend of Lily's and gave her a minor role in the plot of 'Silver Darling' so that my readers would already be familiar with her when she made her debut in Book 1 of the Lady Violet Investigates series. Some of the other characters from Avonstow will make appearances throughout the new series, as there are a few whose stories I wanted to flesh out a bit more, but didn't have the capacity to do it within the original set of books.

One series however, that I was looking forward to saying goodbye to, was The Courts. I always knew the story I wanted to tell with that one and three books was enough to tell it in. There is also the practical consideration of the fact thateven though they are 20,000 words shorter than my adult books, they always end up taking longer to write because they require so much editing to get them right. Being in the fantasy genre also means I often find it much harder to ensure I've been consistent to the rules of the universe I have created. Having two characters who are loosely based on my children also adds an extra level of difficulty, as it means I have to work harder to keep fiction and reality separate and also that I have two extra critics who are not shy about telling me, 'I wouldn't say that!'

So, although I'm proud of the series, I was quite looking forward to saying farewell to it. Unfortunately, my eldest son has other ideas. As he was editing the first draft of 'The Rise of the Winter Queen', he informed me that he had lots of ideas for the spin off series. 'What spin off series?' I inquired, feeling the first stirrings of anxiety. 'The Norse one,' he grinned. I groaned. When I wrote the original version of 'The Reign Of The Winter King', it was called 'The Forest Children' and I wrote a sequel for him called 'The Stranger At The Door', which was centred around the quest to unite the 7 Swords of Wayland (a number entirely invented by the late, great Kip Carpenter) and used Norse mythology as a basis. I haven't thought about the book for years and I have no idea if there is anything worth saving in it. However, as the eldest is moving back home in the summer, I have suggested that if it's something he's truly keen to do, then perhaps it's a project we could work on together. He was keen, so it looks like that could be another side project lined up!

The fact is, I love reading a good series and I love writing them. Plus, they also seem to sell better on the whole. The only problem of course, is that there are a number of standalone books I also have planned and trying to do multiple series means I'm not sure when I'll have the time to get the single books written!