Brennan & Hines on Ending a Series (Part 2)

[jimhines]

This is part two of the discussion between myself and Marie Brennan about wrapping up our four-book series this year. Part one is posted on her blog at http://swan-tower.livejournal.com/491310.html

Comments

[swan_tower]

What's harder than ending a series? Ending a series at a spot other than where you originally planned. (See: the TV show Angel.)

Good on you for pulling it off, though.

And yeah, looking back at the first book -- it's hard to just see what I wrote, and not what I wish I'd written.

[jimhines]

Oh, yes. I live in eternal terror of having a series cancelled on me before I'm finished.

Wasn't it Joss Whedon who said he tried to write each season of Buffy so that if it did get cancelled, it would end on a good note of closure? Or am I misremembering?

[swan_tower]

I almost didn't get to continue the Onyx Court series after two books. That would have been fine had I gone with the original plan of Midnight Never Come followed by With Fate Conspire, but instead I took the books in chronological order; if you saw the structure I described in the first half of this discussion, stopping at two really wouldn't have worked.