I was soliciting for blog post ideas and azteclady on Bluesky asked:

I wonder how you know whether a story is part of a series/trilogy, and another is a standalone.

I was poised to make a glib answer, as I so often do. Then I started thinking about it. And I realised that the question here is, How do you know how much of a story to tell?

Our story starts before we’re born and may not wind down for years after we die.

“No one is finally dead until the ripples they cause in the world die away, until the clock wound up winds down, until the wine she made has finished its ferment, until the crop they planted is harvested. The span of someone’s life is only the core of their actual existence.”–Terry Pratchett, Reaper Man

And our story may centre on ourselves, but we are also all characters in other people’s stories, whether heroes, villains, or bit parts.  Sometimes we’re barely a vestige in those stories.

Even the most sprawling novel only covers a fraction of the story that could be told, which is why there’s such vast volumes of fanfic spinoff novels, homages, rewrites, and new versions out there. And why, to return to the question, you have to decide where the story you’re telling starts and ends.

There is a particular urgency to that decision when you’re a romance novelist. A romance can end with a HFN (Happy For Now) where the characters are in a good place, or a HEA (Happy Ever After), which looks self explanatory. If it’s a HFN, there could be another book. If it’s a HEA, there isn’t another book to come because, you know, they lived happily ever after.

Which leaves only one question: Happily ever after what?

A detective novel is over when the murderer is found and justice has been served in whatever way. A thriller is over when the situation has been resolved, which may well mean everyone except Jack Reacher is dead.  A romance, by its nature, needs to leave the characters to live a happy life together, but how do you decide that they lived happily ever after this particular point? Especially since, well, they won’t. They’re going to die eventually (unless they’re vampires I guess). There is no moment in a human relationship (or indeed life) where you can say: That’s it, there are no more problems, it’s all good from here. Certainly not a wedding, as anyone married can tell you.

My first book was The Magpie Lord (which you can download free, I’m nice). It ends with a satisfactory HFN: the main characters (MCs) are smitten and their immediate problems have been resolved. I could have left them here and it would not have been wrong to do so. However, there was a lot of hinterland in the book (family issues, work issues, plenty of extant worldbuilding, and lots of potential for future problems and indeed growth in the relationship). It ended up as a trilogy because I decided to address all those things.

I wrote Think of England part way through writing the third Magpie book. It ends in almost exactly the same position as The Magpie Lord: the MCs have fallen for one another in the middle of a non-stop dramatic situation, the bad guys are dead, they are definitely in love, but there’s lots of scope for future adventures.

I never wrote a Think of England sequel, despite a lot of people asking me to. I did try, but it didn’t work. And the reason why it didn’t work (I have come to understand) is that the MCs of Think of England have reached their HEA at the end of that book. The characters have decided, yes, they want to be together. It’s not going to be smooth sailing, but they’ve explicitly made that decision, in a way the lovers in The Magpie Lord have not. That’s the HEA moment, no matter future ups and downs. And for me, to write another romance novel starring them feels like it would break the compact with the reader that the HEA is forever.

Think of it like the ending of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid: a freeze frame, telling the viewer We’re not looking any further.  We know what happens after the freeze frame: Butch and Sundance die. Well, so will the heroes of my historical novel. Not immediately, but it’s set in 1904, we’re reading in 2024, you work it out. But the point of the freeze frame is to say, We’re leaving the story here. Hang on to this. Other things may happen after, but this is the shining moment, the bit you should remember.

(I loved reading the Roger Lancelyn Green retelling of Robin Hood as a child, but I always skipped the last chapter. I don’t need to see Robin die; I want him in the eternal present of Sherwood Forest. Don’t end that for me.)

It has to be said, I’ve got this badly wrong in the planning before now. Band Sinister was going to be the first of a mixed-MC trilogy, but in fact, the resolution of book 1 turned out to be enough of a HEA for the whole lot (thus making it a one-book series. Well done me). Spectred Isle was also conceived as the first of a mixed MC series when in fact (I now realise), it could/should have been a trilogy about those two MCs. It’s published now, with a sufficient HEA moment that I can’t continue the story. Which is a bugger, but I would rather lose out on those stories than undermine readers’ faith that when I do an HEA, I mean it.

Because here’s the thing. At the end of A Gentleman’s Position, set 1821 IIRC, Lord Richard Vane and his faithful valet get their unequivocal HEA and we stop there. Two linked trilogies later, in 1894 or so, Richard’s great-nephew James Vane is reminiscing about his beloved great-uncle (and his faithful valet), and we learn that Richard is dead. Does his death detract from the HEA of A Gentleman’s Position?

To my mind, no. Part of the pleasure of having multiple books in a shared universe is that we see or hear of the characters we loved before, and if you’re moving around in time, well, people don’t live forever. We know Richard got his HEA, whatever else happened in his next fifty-odd years. His story is freeze framed, even if he got old and died afterwards, like people do. In some ways, having him and his lover fondly remembered is part of their story, the after of their HEA.

“Do you not know that a man is not dead while his name is still spoken?”–Terry Pratchett, Going Postal

However, if I’d indicated that his lover had died young/tragically, or they’d broken up/been unhappy, that would have undermined the original HEA. It has been done, and it is to my mind a shitty move to pull on romance readers, given the genre promise of the HEA. Save that sort of malarkey for a genre that wants it. I believe they love dead spouses in detective fiction.

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My books sorted into series or standalone here. Don’t say I never do anything for you.