19 GHOSTS books and minor characters
Jon F has a GHOSTS question, edited slightly to remove spoilers:
“I think of the Ghosts and Ghost Exile as a rather large set of books to read, and so, I have a question: During your time as an author, and especially for the Ghosts and Ghost Exile series, did you remember the minor characters well enough to include them in the later books, or did you sometimes have to go back to previous books to add them to the protagonist’s recollections?”
Yes. 19 books (and I’m starting #20 in a few days) is rather a large set of books to read. 🙂
But to answer the question, when I’m writing something new in a long series I totally go back and check things all the time. CTRL+F is really useful for that. I open up the book where a character first appeared, search for the name, and recheck Caina’s initial impressions of that character in question.
What’s really useful, too, is that Windows File Search can search inside Word documents. So if I can’t remember the first time a character appeared, I can just search for the name in File Explorer’s built in search function and see which Word documents come up.
Ebooks are a beautiful thing.
-JM
I wanted to say that I really enjoy the books and one of the more interesting literary choices I know you’ve made in the ghost series is how except for Kylon most of the minor characters can be dropped in and out of the storyline because they also have a life away from your main plot. Great writing and hope to have more soon.
Thanks! As a writer it’s possible to solve a lot of plotting problems by thinking through the consequences of things logically – people have their own lives when Caina isn’t around. Though Caina’s life and Kylon’s life increasingly revolve around each other, so she’ll see much more of him. 🙂