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AOTW: When you originally created your character(s), had you already decided they would appear in more than one novel, or did their popularity with readers persuade you to write about them again? Was it difficult to convince the publishers of the series' potential?
Carolyn Hart: In 1985 when I created Annie Laurance, owner of a mystery bookstore on a South Carolina sea island, I hadn't sold a book in several years. My earlier titles, all stand alone books, had been published, then disappeared into the black hole of publishing. It would have taken a lot more effrontery than I possessed to have thought in terms of a series. When the manuscript was accepted and the publisher asked for more books about Annie, I was delighted to oblige and, of course, blithely responded that certainly I'd intended Death on Demand as the first in a series and would be glad to write more. At that point in my career, I would have been happy to promise a series about a nearsighted armadillo with a hidden past and a weakness for red licorice.
Ian Rankin: I had no idea Rebus would be anything other than a one-off --- in fact, I was in two minds about killing him off at the end of Knots and Crosses. After that book, I wrote a couple of spy/action novels, and only came back to Rebus because someone said they'd really liked the character and wanted to know more about him. The series was a ''slow burner''... I doubt publishers these days would allow me to spend four or five books working on my craft, working on getting under the skin of my main character before sales took off.
Ridley Pearson: Undercurrents was the first Lou Boldt novel, and I never intended for Boldt and Daphne Matthews to become a series. It was only after researching a novel while in England for a year (on the Raymond Chandler Fulbright) that I latched onto a true crime story that I wanted to fictionalize and my publisher persuaded me to make the novel a Boldt. A series was born. The publisher believed that even though these were not "mysteries" per se, the success of Undercurrents would "lift" any subsequent Boldt book. I've written seven now (half of my 14 published novels) and each has outsold the last.
George Pelecanos: I never think that far ahead. Somewhere in the writing of the book I start seeing a possible progression, that is if the characters interest me. It's no problem selling publishers on a series; if they smell blood in the commercial sense then they will generally ask, and sometimes require, that you deliver a series book.
Robert B. Parker: It didn't occur to me that Spenser wouldn't appear in more than one novel. I had no difficulty in persuading the publisher. If a continuing character sells well, they have a built in market. If he doesn't they can decline to publish it.
Nevada Barr: I created the characters for a one-time stand alone book. After it had been sold, my editor asked me if I could make it into a series.
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