Blog Tour: Betrayed by Ednah Walters -- Guest Post + Giveaway!

Writing a Series

I used to think that writing multiple books in a series would be easy and fun, until I started writing the Guardian Legacy books. You’d think that after all the world-building and getting your characters down it should be smooth sailing, right? No, it doesn’t get easier.

When I started writing Awakened, the official prequel to the Guardian Legacy series, I didn’t expect it to turn into a series, until I wrote the last few chapters and realized I should write book 2.

The trick to writing multiple books is giving your characters a motive then planning the series around it. If the motive of your story is love, you can have the love story develop slowly by making it appear one sided, have the hero and heroine confess their love for each but make something stops them from being together, or have the lovers together, but something is always trying to rip them apart. We see the latter in Twilight, where they fell in love in book 1 and things happen in book 2 that makes Edward leave. Vampire Diaries, Elena and Stefano fall in love in book 1. I know the TV series is very different from the books, but still, the series also show them together, but people and situations keep trying to come between them (By the way I’m Team Damon!!!).

Whatever motive you choose, it should open up the door for more books. Each time, you can add characters that tie nicely into the series (nothing contrived), or kill someone (lol). The whole point is to engage your readers and make them want to keep reading.

In some cases, the motive is survival, not love. Then you give your characters a goal, which becomes the focus of each book, like in Mortal Instrument series. In the series, the Shadow Hunters go after the mortal instruments in each book, because if their enemy gets them, he’ll raise an army and destroy them. In BDB by J.R. Ward, the first 5 books I read centers around killing their enemies, the Lessers. Even though the story involves different members of their family, what motivates them is survival. I will go back to the series to see if it stays true. In Harry Potter, the good wizards want to survive and their hope depends on a young boy their enemy could not defeat. In each of these series, people fall in love, relationships develop or fizzle, but the motive stays the same.

Anyway, The Guardian Legacy didn’t start as series, but as soon as I introduced the character at the end of Awakened, I knew I had to write book 2 (Betrayed). Why? Because the series is not just centered around a love story. It is the saga of a girl, who discovers she is different and powerful, and the survival of her people depends on her. Falling in love just made things more complicated for her. Her right to love her boyfriend comes up again and again, but the real motive is the survival of the Guardians.

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About Betrayed...

Lil isn't just an average teenager. She's one of the Nephilim--the descendants of humans and angels--which gives her some serious psi skills and a mission for redemption. Just when Lil thinks she's found a balance between her normal life with human friends and her training to become a Guardian, she's warned that someone close to her will betray her. When the boy she loves starts acting strangely and one of her human friends acquires a supernatural ability, Lil begins to realize that someone is manipulating the people she loves... and won't stop until she's been lured to the dark side.

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