Hi Gang, Craig once more to wrap up this weird series about cautionary tales for writers. You can check out the two previous posts at these links:

Canon

One Upmanship

This one is about something that’s all the rage right now; prequels. You have a cool story, and one of the supporting characters could have been your main character if you weren’t into it eight chapters already. Wouldn’t that character’s story be fun to write? Seems like everyone is doing it today.

I’ve struggled with all the things these posts relate to. I wrote a fun stand-alone, and my author friends begged me to make it into a series. What the hell am I going to do for an encore? (Wrote it anyway. Polishes nails.) I’ve struggled to live within the parameters I established multiple volumes into my ongoing series. (That one is a series on purpose.)

Then it occurred…