Read It Again, Sam

Posted on by glenchen

I have to confess that I have a guilty pleasure. I like to read my own books.

Well, put it this way. I’m never going to be rich off the sales of my books. Sure, a few people read and enjoy them, but not nearly as many as I would like. And some books still haven’t made enough money to pay for the investment I made in them.

So in the meantime, I figure what’s the shame in enjoying the fruits of my own labors?

Actually, what got me interested in a retrospective look at what I’ve written was the fact that my current, actually formerly current (I’ll clarify that in a minute) project is a wash and I’ve decided to move on to Plan B. Basically, I tried to write outside my genre of expertise, got bogged down in a project that I couldn’t make work and everything screeched to a halt.

In the meantime, Plan B came into my mind. I’ve been working with Celeste Perrino on the Foundation series–you know it through the books Salome’s Charger and The Key of Solomon–and I’ve gotten inspired to create a spinoff series from one of the characters in the series. Connie Simescu is the younger, spunky college-aged sister of Dr. Madelyn Simms in the first two books. Connie is introduced in The Key of Solomon, and I immediately fell in love with her. So I have been coming up with a series based on her adventures in college.

Then an even wilder thought came to me: how about a spinoff series based on not one original series, but two? What I have planned is for characters from my very popular Champion series to join Connie in her new series.

There are some inherent problems, I know. People who aren’t familiar with either of the first two series need to have enough information to be able to enjoy Connie’s series on its own. On the other hand, I want a few references there that will entice readers to go back and take a look at the other two series.

It’s a challenge, but it’s an intriguing one. I’m tentatively calling the first book, Heretics Among Us, and if you are at all familiar with the Champion series you’ll know why. If you aren’t, you soon will be when you read the new book.

So the point with me reading my earlier works was to reestablish the earlier stories in my mind. Well, that was my excuse anyway. That, and I just enjoyed reading them.

More later, as I continue to work on it.