The Watchmaker's Chain

Is it me, or has there been an increasing trend of late for books to be written as part of a series?

I suppose the reasons for doing this are fairly self-evident, and difficult to argue against - if you have a successful book then producing a series of sequels allows each to benefit from the exposure of the one that precedes it - and of course having developed a strong character (or characters) in one book that you can then develop further in subsequent ones obviously has advantages over starting from scratch each time.

I'm certainly not going to suggest that this is in any way a less worthy approach to writing - readers might buy a second book on the strength of a first, but they'll soon say what they think if it's rubbish, so the writer still has to work hard for their readers' loyalty. The thing is though - for me at least - so far, I haven't actually chosen what I'm going to write about - it's always chosen me (as it were).

I've written before about how I love waiting to see how a plot will develop once I've given it a bit of a helping hand. It's a bit like tipping over that first domino and watching the chain reaction that ensues. The way I come up with ideas for books is a bit like that too, but only a bit. Sending the dominoes toppling requires a conscious and premeditated act on your part, but that's not how my ideas for books arise, (even though that's part of how the plot then develops). For me, the process that gives rise to that initial eureka moment is not (or at least until now hasn't been) a conscious one.

Somewhere in the dark and dusty recesses of my mind there's a tiny office with a door marked 'Private', in which the inspiration machine chugs away, sifting information, conjuring original thoughts and looking for the seeds of stories. Those seeds are planted in what in my brain passes for fertile soil - they are tended and watered, and then, when the moment is right some sort of mental minion gives my conscious self a sharp nudge before quietly but forcefully informing me that here is another story that needs to be written.

But should it always be like that?

I've been wondering about this for a few months now - on and off. I've wondered whether The Testing of Archie Rathbone has a sequel in it, and I confess that the jury's still out. To a large extent I know that the book readers of the world occupy the majority of the seats on that jury, because it's fairly safe to say that if the current book doesn't sell then I probably wouldn't venture a second. That said though, although most of the strands of the plot are resolved by the end of the book, there is always the question of what happened next? and equally, what happened before the book started?

In the meantime though long before I'd even finished writing The Testing of Archie Rathbone one of those mental minions came to me with another story that had to be told. Shortly afterwards I started to write The Watchmaker's Chain, and the dominoes started to tumble.