Books upon books

This could be quite a long essay if I wanted to spend time writing it instead of, you know, reading books (or writing editing them, or figuring out my seed orders), but here's what you get instead.

I still <3 Reginald Hill. I am reading the Dalziel/Pascoe series all out of order, which is not my usual preference, but needs must; this peregrination is of footpaths over the fells, or rather through libraries and their loan services and the shipping speeds of used book stores. Right now I'm in the middle of On Beulah Height, which is entirely gripping despite my knowing how it comes out because I've read all the books after it. And a few before.

Anyway, one effect of delving sideways into a series like this is that it gets me thinking about the writing of series fiction. Which I have to; having written four books in one big arc with at least a fifth to come does not make me an expert at this, since for one thing I haven't faced a broad reading public, but it does make me someone with a personal interest in techniques. With series fiction, you hope people will pick them up in the right order, but you always know you'll face readers like me who start in the middle, and so each book has to be comprehensible on its own. ( continued thoughts )