The Accidental Series
I’ve talked about it before that FRESH START was written as a stand-alone, and technically, THE BEST LINES would have been as well, but I wanted Eva to be friends with Hannah and Alyssa, so I brought FRESH START into the fold. Then, we met Charlie & Hailey, and I decided to get them a book so that they could have their happy ending. By doing that, we met Summer, Lena, and Emma, and I liked all of them, too. The pattern just kept going on and on.
So, what happened? Well, my wife pointed out recently that the reason I kept wanting to go on and write not only the CHICAGO SERIES but then SAN FRANCISCO, TAHOE, and so on was that not only did I like my side characters, which is something I suspect a lot of authors also do, but I had built them into real people.
I could see them with full lives because of the work I’d put into them in the book that wasn’t even about them, and because of that, they were people I genuinely cared about and wanted to see fall in love. I’d put the work in on those characters in a previous book, which made writing their actual book even easier.
When I was writing JUST TELL HER, I fell a little in love with Emma and Hailey’s young love story, and I almost didn’t want to get Charlie and Hailey together there for a while because I felt so bad for Emma losing her first love not once, but twice. At the end of LOVE WALK INTO THE LANTERN, after Emma lost out to Lena for Summer’s affection, I randomly decided to have Emma move to San Francisco because I wanted her to have something positive, and the idea of starting over for her felt right.
I had no idea I’d be writing a San Francisco Series when I remembered Keira Worthy from LOVE WALKED INTO THE LANTERN. She was also such a small character. I knew she was an event planner, but that was it. I wrote the Chicago Series accidentally and then, somehow, the San Francisco Series accidentally, too, because I wrote Keira having friends, of course. We met Kellan, Keira’s ex, Macon, and Hillary, and I had no idea what to do with any of them when I was writing CHECKING THE RIGHT BOX, but because I’d fleshed them all out so much, I knew they felt real to me and that they would to others as well.