About Series... by Liz Flaherty

Doing a switch with Wrangler Janie today. I know it's disappointing--she writes the best posts--but I'll try not to be boring!

Let me start this by saying I’m a little tired of series. I say that because I just finished one—its final book, The Summer of Sorrow and Dance, is Out There for all to buy—and I’m exhausted. While I’m hopeful you will want to read all three books in the series and be sorry it’s done

The responsibilities of keeping a series straight—all those eye colors!—are…well, kind of beyond me is what they are. Whenever I start one, I mean to keep everything in perfect order so that I can easily find where someone went to school, or who she went to Homecoming with, and what her middle name is. And yet I still end up with more than one Max (although one of them was a dog), a past on a secondary character that doesn’t work in the next book, and plot points that either fail or I wish I’d thought of earlier.

I have to admit that the settings and people we revisit make a deeper imprint, don’t they? I’ve had the River Walk in two books; Peacock, Tennessee, in at least two; and Lake Miniagua in several. I love going back there. I love mentioning them in books that have nothing to do with them. My editor at Harlequin used to snicker when he caught a reference to a place from my backlist, but he never argued it.

As every writer knows, and probably every reader as well, the settings and the people in series are as real to our hearts as the yellow house on the corner or the lady who runs the bread shop on Main Street in our own communities. We know how the towns got their names and we feel the losses and celebrations of the people on the pages. If no one else is in the room to see, it's quite possible we dance at their weddings.  

Did I say I was tired of series? Really? Did I say that? What was I thinking? 

~*~

In the midst of a summer of change, they’re both searching for an anchor.

Dinah is a mom, a giver, and a doer, so she’s used to change, but this summer is kind of overdoing that. The diner where she’s worked for half her life is closing, her college-age kids aren’t coming home for the summer, and a property on nearby Cooper Lake is calling her name, bringing long-held dreams of owning a B & B to the fore. Newcomer Zach Applegate is entering into her dreams, too.

Divorced dad, contractor, and recovering alcoholic Zach is in Fallen Soldier, Pennsylvania, to visit his brother and to decide what’s coming next in his life. He doesn’t like change much, yet it seems to be everywhere. But he finds an affinity for remodeling and restoration, is overjoyed when his teenage sons join him for the summer, and he likes Dinah Tyler, too. A lot.

Dinah and Zach each experience sorrow and tumult, but go on to dance in the kitchen. Together, they have something, but is it enough?

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