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Yesterday, a male Twitter follower DM’d me to ask some questions about writing. Since I love talking about writing almost more than I love actually writing (it’s close, people), I happily obliged.
He started by asking me how/why an author might chose to undertake a series, rather than standalone stories. Since he hadn’t elaborated on the content of his self-described short stories, I compared how thriller writers structure a series against how romance writers do it. The long and the short of it is simply genre conventions and what your readers are looking for. Brad Thor readers want to read about Scott Harvath solving international mysteries. They count on each story to be fundamentally standalone, but featuring their favorite hero doing what he does best. This is in contrast to romance series, featuring interconnected families/friend circles, in large part because of the emotional factor for romance readers. They fall in love with these characters and want to see them reappear over and over throughout the series.
I asked him what genre he writes, and he responded: “Please don’t make fun of me, but they’re romance and erotica.” Since he knows I published an erotic short, I would hope that he would know I would be the last person to make fun of another romance/romantic erotica/erotica writer. Alas, he didn’t realize just how many men write for these genres and assumed that based on his gender, his literary choices marked him as an oddball.
That out of the way, he described his series idea (only one or two stories have been written): a mature married couple on their second chance at romance. This sparked my interest because I see more and more calls for these exact tropes, and here he is writing them altogether in one series!
He was stunned by this revelation. “I had no idea this was something anyone would want to read.” Man, that struck me. Isn’t that the question we are constantly asking ourselves? Who the heck wants to read this, anyway?
The answer is simple: someone. Someone out there wants to read the exact story you have floating around in your brain. In his case, many editors from Carina Press are actively seeking what he’s working on. The fact is you will never know if you just assume the answer is “no one” and never put your work out there. Not to be cliche, but how many times was JK Rowling rejected? How many times was Stephen King?
Believe in your work. Believe in it enough to keep searching for the agent/editor/publisher who agrees with you. Don’t be afraid to self publish, but you need that belief in yourself to market your book until that audience of interested someone’s finds it.
Someone out there wants to read your work. Your job is to let them.