Ask ’em if you’ve got ’em!

Libby asks: How hard do you find it to come up with ideas ? & do you have time set aside just for writing or do you write as ideas come to you? Ideas are everywhere. I’m happy to say I have more ideas than time to develop them and I hope it always stays that way. Yes, I have a schedule I need to keep to get all my work done. I write pretty much daily on work I’m contracted to produce in advance – right now I’m finishing a book that will release in November, for instance. I contracted this book last year.

Kathleen asks: Do you decide in advance how many books are going to be in a series? Or do you let the characters grow and give them their own book? Sometimes I do. It’s always my goal to never go on too long with a series. In that case, I knew there would be four Chase books because there were four brothers and I wasn’t going to invent cousins or whatever. But sometimes the world is big enough to do multiple books/story arcs within that world. The Cascadia Wolves are that way – there are 4 books in the Pellini story arc (Enforcer, Tri Mates, Wolf Unbound and Standoff) but there are eight books and novellas set in that world as of this year. Sometimes I know up front who the books in a series will be about, other times I just write the book and then as I’m working the idea for the next book comes along (this is how my Petal books work)

Susan asks: How many more De La vega Cats stories will there be? Will there be any this year? I don’t know, actually (see answer above for my position on series, de La Vega is like Petal in that I write the ideas as they come to me. I will be returning to de La Vega in 2014, most likely with Armando’s story. But I don’t know how many books total there will be. As for this year, I’ve got 15 releases out this year so I’m not adding anything else 🙂

Leonora asks: When will you be returning to the Federation? Yes, it’s my plan to do so, but my schedule is pretty packed through mid 2014 right now so it won’t be until 2014/2015 at the earliest.