I've dabbled in this subject before.
Months before Maddie was born, I devoured the first Harry Potter novel - yes, it took me about sixteen years to get around to beginning what will be considered J.K. Rowling's magnum opus. Don't judge me. Truth be told, I was spoiled on the movies, and read in a lot of other genres and authors while the Potter books were being published. And while the books are always better (far better), the endings and main themes were explored and displayed in great depth in the films. So I knew the ultimate fate of Harry Potter and the enormity of his battles with He Who Must Not Be Named long before I read the first page of The Sorcerer's Stone. But I enjoyed the book immensely.
Unfortunately, I have yet to read the second book, Chamber of Secrets, even years later. I do plan to read them, but again, life and other reading, and writing, and many other things has gotten in the way.
While in high school, I read Lord of the Rings, a fascinating, if not bloated book (mine was the single volume of the three main books). There's not much I can tell you from memory that you haven't seen in those films, save for a few nonessential side characters and treks that didn't make it to the big screen.
A few years ago I read the Hunger Games' three books (Catching Fire the best of the three, in my opinion).
Currently, I have just finished the third novel in the Dark Tower series, and am reading through Still Alice in my attempt to get a wider understanding of Alzheimer's Disease before picking up the fourth DT novel, Wizard and Glass.
I'm afraid to admit there are many other truly wonderful sets of books that constitute a series that I have not yet read. The Chronicles of Narnia, Chaos Walking, His Dark Materials, Discworld, The Dark is Rising to name a few.
In my own writing, all of my stories have been developed in such a way that they're wrapped up in a single volume. It's just how I operate.
Until last spring.
During a "break" (because when do writers ever truly stop working?) after finishing a first draft of a YA novel, I got an idea for a story that could possibly be the first steps of a much longer journey. I had been reading one of the Walking Dead novels by Jay Bonansinga, which center around the town of Woodbury and how it became a fix-up town in the wake of the apocalypse, along with its own justice system, and the thought occurred to me to use a similar setup. Minus the zombies.
I wrote a first draft, titled The Long Road Home, and left it to simmer for a while. I did a second draft over the summer and expanded on some of the themes. There were times I was really into it, and other times where I thought it made for a very interesting "trunk novel" if nothing else, and provided me the place to further exercise my craft.
Over the course of about eleven months away from the project, my mind has started to wander back...wander with a fevered curiosity to those typed pages, to my hero, Jace Maddox, his mantle as the peacekeeper of a waystation thoroughfare called Lin-Maycomb in the generations following a catastrophic event that has wiped the world clean, forcing people to start over, and wrapping his mind around the truth of his existence as provided by the arrival of a stranger who has given no name, who has come to the town confessing of murder with a book in his hand that holds the most simple explanation of all as to the truth of his origin and Jace's destiny.
Thing is...while that all may sound intriguing...this book is unlike anything I've previously scribed. It's very much centered on the protagonist, with few side characters (that's my norm), but the dystopian setting, the fantasy elements, the fact that it is only the first steps of a long journey, are new to me.
I can't say I'm totally comfortable yet making this manuscript a promised future novel - and mostly because beyond Volume One, I don't know where the story goes - but if I do, you'll see it here first.
I mention all of this because, well, where I was once against ever doing a series before, I've started to give it serious consideration. To see if I can do it.
To date, my longest piece of writing is the first novel I ever wrote - a massive mashup of sci-fi/horror/zombie apocalypse/Invasion of the Body Snatchers POS called Signal, which I wrongfully self-pubbed ten years ago (don't bother looking for it if you don't have one, it's out of print). I would love nothing more than to have my longest piece of writing be something that means more to me, something to be proud of, that embodies all of the themes of life I tend to explore, and that is just all around better.
The Long Road Home may turn out to be just that.
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