Five things... about series

In my infinite wisdom I've decided that once I've cleared a few short stories (and possibly two lust bites, have to work out when I need them by first) off my to do list, I'm going to start working on a new series.

So, before I finish those short stories, I'm trying to work out what I need to have done.

Here are the five things I've thought of so far.

1. Titles. I have six plots in my head. That means I need six individual titles and a series title. It would be nice to have them all to start with, or I'm going to drive myself crazy re-naming files every time I change my mind. I have a few ideas. The series one in particular is proving problematic. The best one I can come up with fits - it sums up the series perfectly, yet somehow... don't know.

2. Character names. I've named one so far. He appears in all the books, so it's nice that he's picked a name for himself, but now I have to convince the rest to do the same. My theory is, if I pick them all in advance I can make sure I don't fall into my usual trap of naming half a dozen people with nearly identical names.

3. Character discriptions. I don't want anyone changing their hair and eye colour half way through. And I don't want to find out there I've made all the submissives blonde and all the dominants dark or something daft like that. If I'm going to have that many main characters, I want a bit of variety! I think I need a new spread sheet.

4. Basic plot points. Each story might have a dominant and a submissive man in it, but I don't want them to have the same conflicts to content with or any of that. I don't like to write the same story twice in any circumstances. I'm particularly determined that it's not going to happen in this series. I'd like someone to be able to sit down and read from the begining through to the end without stopping to thing, hey that happened in the other book!

5. Location. I think I need a map. I'm creating a place for them to live. It's going to be a fictional city in Wales, but I still need to pin down all the specifics. What's it called, where abouts in it the characters live.

Yep, I know I'm totally over annalysing the whole thing. It's not reasonable to expect to know what happens at the end of book six while I haven't started book one - especially when I don't usually know how a short story is going to end when I start writing it, but there you go. I never claimed to be sane.

...

Other news:

It's still snowing, but people *touch wood* are able to get from A-B better. The thing is, we live in a valley. You can go along the base of the valley fine, but it's steep sides with narrow streets that haven't been cleared with snow - you have to get to the base of the valley first, and a lot of people can't at the moment. They've also closed the roads going over the top of the mountains between the valleys, which makes trying to go east - west interesting! They say we'll have more snow over the weekend.

Writing: Second short story will be finished tonight. I'm pretty sure once I've finished the four shorts, I'm going to read them over and find out that I've got the first chapter of four different novels.

Editing: Finally got some work done on my anthology sub. Still hoping to finish the second draft by the end of the weekend.

Publishing: Secret Service is out on Monday!!!!!!!!!!! Sorry, but it's the last blog post before then. Got to squee about it a bit :)

Have a good weekend everyone.