How does an author start writing not just one story, but a series of novels? Where does it all start?

Bestselling author Maya Banks launches the latest book in her KGI series this week and joined us to talk about how this bestselling series’s evolution is a family affair:

When Fiction Becomes Family

It’s only fiction. That’s easy to say, but what about when characters in a series become like family?

For me the KGI series started with a family. The Kellys. I wasn’t sure if the series would be strictly romantic suspense and I didn’t want to shoehorn myself by containing it within strict parameters, because at the heart of the KGI series is…family. In fact most all of my stories address the theme of family, loyalty and deep friendship. And by family, I don’t necessarily mean those with blood ties.

I’ve always ascertained that family is what you make it. I suppose my writing reflects that since it’s a reoccurring theme in my books no matter what genre I write in.

The Kellys have always held an especially dear place in my heart. I envisioned this family years before the first book was published. Waiting to get to tell the stories of the Kelly family was agonizing and frustrating because I wanted so badly to delve into the world I’d already created in my mind.

That first story, The Darkest Hour, and the subsequent books in the series got labeled romantic suspense. I’d argue that they aren’t true romantic suspense novels, but they seem to defy categorization. Each story follows a different member of the “Kelly family.” By this I mean not just the immediate members of the Kelly clan—those people who aren’t blood related—but family all the same.

Two years after first introducing Ethan and Rachel Kelly, I was compelled to go back to where it all began. While the end of their story promised healing, love and happiness, there was also the knowledge that they still had a long way to go. For this reason I wanted to give readers a look down the road after the “happily ever after.”

For me, Softly at Sunrise, the novella follow up to The Darkest Hour, brought closure, a sense of a more convincing long term relationship and showed Ethan and Rachel in a happier place. As I like revisiting characters in the KGI series, especially those who had to fight the hardest for their happily ever afters, I’d love to one day be able to write a follow up novella for P.J. and Cole from Shades of Gray. No guarantees of course but it’s definitely on my “wish list.”

What about you? Do you enjoy reading stories focused on a tight-knit family?

xoxo

Maya Banks