The Trilogy Epidemic

Dear Readers, potential readers, and the merely curious,

Today I wish to address the issue of the trilogy - a series of novels consisting of exactly three volumes and comprising one continuous story or some combination of stories related in such a way that they may be marketed as a series.

I'm not suggesting there is a problem - other than the great proliferation of trilogies, especially in the science fiction and fantasy genre. In other genre, related books are sometimes considered a trilogy, usually because they have the same characters or setting, even though they may not have been considered a trilogy by the author.

For me, I have achieved a kind of trifecta - three trilogies (two completed and one in the process of being completed) - which gives me special status...and not much else.

My first trilogy began as a stand-alone book, THE DREAM LAND, which involved a young couple's misadventures through an interdimensional doorway and how they learned to function in their new realm while often trying to return home. Given the setting - an entire new planet - the possibilities for further stories were endless. I immediately began the second volume upon completion of the first, but I stopped when I ran into a plot conundrum. Then life got in the way, as it may for writers, and I did not finish that second volume (or publish the first book) until ten years later. When I resumed writing on the second book, I decided it had to become a trilogy, and I wrote the third volume straightaway as I concluded Book 2, DREAMS OF FUTURE'S PAST. The idea of a trilogy was not a thing in itself but merely a result of writing three novels involving the same principal players in the same setting. I simply enjoyed the story and kept writing, even with a comet approaching our favorite fictitious world in Book 3, DIASPORA.

I wrote two stand-alone novels after that sci-fi trilogy (A BEAUTIFUL CHILL and AIKO). Then, goaded by the Twilight series' portrayal of vampires, I wrote my own version, based on the finest medical research I could research. A DRY PATCH OF SKIN was intended as another stand-alone, a one-off tale of realistic vampire horror. Yet the ending kept nagging at me: more what-if questions. And so, a few years later, after writing two more stand-alone novels, I picked up the vampire story once more with the idea of making it a trilogy from the start. Titled SUNRISE and SUNSET, respectively, I picked up the story of my vampire hero a few years into his future - and our future - in the second volume and much further into the future in the third volume. I failed, however, to have characters mention the pandemic of 2020-2022 as they recounted their adventures since the first volume's 2014 setting (also written in 2014). (Upon finishing the trilogy, I contemplated a fourth book, making it a tetralogy. I started and then set aside a novel concerning the next generation.)

Then I returned to writing stand-alones. First I wrote a semi-biography based on a real person's life with fictionalized conclusion (A GIRL CALLED WOLF), my most-reviewed book. Then, challenged by my fantasy-writing friends, I wrote an epic fantasy involving dragons (EPIC FANTASY *WITH DRAGONS), which is my longest novel - not counting trilogies as a single story. But then I returned to the vampire story and wrote volumes two and three and consider it finished with no threat of a volume four.

After completing the vampire trilogy, I wrote a new novel (EXCHANGE) and I finished a previously written book which I had been revising forever (YEAR OF THE TIGER), as well as completing a sci-fi novel which I had left unfinished for several years (THE MASTERS' RIDDLE) which is told from the point-of-view of a non-human alien hero. So far, so good. 

Then we experienced that pandemic, had lockdowns and virtual school, and I thought it would be the perfect time to write a pandemic novel, a kind of post-apocalyptic sci-fi drama of some kind. I started something by describing my own experiences with the virus then fell silent. I couldn't actually write about something so serious while we were actually dealing with it in such a serious way, so I set it aside.

And then I retired from teaching English (literature, composition, linguistics) and had nothing much to do. So I picked up the pandemic novel scriblings and took another look at it. The main thing for me was to find the right way into the story - something more than coming up with a compelling first page. When something totally unrelated sparked an amusing idea, I knew I'd found the key to enter the story. Even then, I imagined a stand-alone book about a boy and his mother and her tuba fighting to survive in a lawless land. However, before I was very far into the first volume of FLU SEASON: THE BOOK OF MOM, I decided the story would continue into a second - and the inevitable third volume - making it a trilogy. Darn trilogies! Just when I think I'm back to stand-alones the trilogy pulls me back in!

One interesting aspect of my pandemic trilogy is the way Book 1 is actually two books. They make the journey from a chaotic city to the relative sanctuary of a coastal island, which was the story I intended to write when I started. They would reach safety and that would be that. (Sorry if this is a spoiler.) But what happens when they reach that place? I couldn't just leave them there and 'so that's all, folks!' So writing about their uncomfortable experiences on the island was practically another novel. Hence, the two sides of this first novel make it a little on the thick side, but it ends at a better place - and sets up the next book, which is FLU SEASON: THE WAY OF THE SON, which continues our characters' story. The third book will be titled FLU SEASON: DAWN OF THE DAUGHTERS to complete the FLU SEASON TRILOGY. Have you ever had so much flu season?

However, the second volume of FLU SEASON is more traditional in its structure and does not comprise two separate but related stories like the first volume, and therefore is thinner. In fact, compared to THE DREAM LAND and the vampire trilogy which has come to be named for its hero as the STEFAN SZEKELY TRILOGY, this second volume is shorter than the second volumes of my other trilogies, which tend to be longer because of much more complex things going on. If you look at other trilogies, including in movie series such as Star Wars and Lord of the Rings, the second volume features the characters going on separate journeys, hence a dual story which comes together by the end.

The final point I wish to share is that this so-called pandemic trilogy was conceived as a trilogy almost from the start. Unlike my first two trilogies where the first book was written as a stand-alone, FLU SEASON is conceived and plotted as a trilogy, which is a different way of writing for me. However, such a project, seemingly vast in its early stages looking forward, has been a fairly easy and delightfully horrific story to write. I know my readers will be happy to know I enjoyed writing it. It has not been a harsh effort, a droll task to be accomplished, yet I do not relish the abuse and horrors I put my cast through. In FLU SEASON: THE BOOK OF MOM you will find a story told 'close to the vest' in as realistic, contemporary, visceral manner possible, a story which could begin wherever you happen to live, say, in the next couple weeks - although in the trilogy the pandemic has been going on for six years when the first book opens and begins its ninth year as Book 2 ends. 

Happy ending? Like life itself, there is good and bad to everything that happens and it is in that light that we must carry on. My only regret is that there will not be a fourth volume. Maybe another stand-alone will follow. We shall see.

Thanks for your support. Please leave a review on your favorite book review sites.

Your Humble Narrator

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