Welcome to the World of Continuities
Okay, picture me jumping up & down & squealing, which is pretty much what I've been doing ever since I found out that MR. AND MISTRESS is #1 on the Waldenbooks Series Romance Bestseller List for the second week in a row!!! Yippee!And now that I'm really & truly sure MR. AND MISTRESS is out there, I can post an article I wrote, but have been hanging on to. It's about being involved in a continuity series such as "The Elliotts," & I hope you enjoy!
WELCOME TO THE WORLD OF CONTIUITIES
by Heidi Betts
I've always been a fan of continuity stories. I don't always read them in order, but I still enjoy them, so it was a real thrill for me to be asked to write one of the stories in this year's Silhouette Desire continuity series, "The Elliotts."
Of course, I was also nervous. I'd never participated in a continuity before, and really didn't know what would be involved. Fortunately, there were a lot of very friendly authors out there to help me along, and I learned the ins and outs rather quickly.
So what is a continuity? Well, it's a series of books written by different authors, revolving around a particular family or place or storyline. They usually take place all within one category line (such as Silhouette Desire or Harlequin American), although sometimes they do cross lines or will even occur independently, out-of-line. ("Hotel Marchand" or "Code Red," for example.) And they tend to come out one per month for a set number of months. Continuity series are also "by invitation only." Meaning that editors concoct the ideas, then decide which authors would best suit the individual storylines and ask them to participate.
Once an author agrees to be a part of the series, she's sent what's called a "bible." The bible contains summaries of each individual story, as well as plot and setting details that will run throughout the entire series, and a short blurb about each character who will make an appearance. Sometimes we even get blueprints of what a family estate or office building looks like.
"The Elliotts" (my personal favorite so far, when it comes to continuities...not that I'm biased or anything *g*) is a twelve-book continuity, with the first having been released in January 2006 and the last being released in December 2006, about a wealthy New York family running its own magazine empire. Each book contains its own hero and heroine--one or the other being a member of that illustrious Elliott dynasty--and its own independent storyline...but each book is also connected to the one before and the one after by threads and details that run throughout the entire series. At times, one of the stories will even allude to something that is going to happen a few books down the road.
Each book also tends to span a one month period of time, and that month is whichever month the book will be released. My contribution to "The Elliotts," MR. AND MISTRESS, will be out in May, so the entire story (with the exception of a brief prologue) took place in May. Whatever else was going on, and no matter where my characters were...I got to bop back and forth a bit between Manhattan and Las Vegas...I had to make sure that the weather suited the month I was working with. No getting stuck in a snow storm or suffering a heat wave for me. :-)
As you can imagine, when it comes to continuities, the authors involved often work very closely with each other to make sure their characters' personalities and overlapping scenes mesh. It's fun to see your characters come to life in another author's book, or appear in scenes you aren't actually writing yourself. MR. AND MISTRESS, for example, is about Cullen Elliott, Director of Sales for Snap Magazine, and who also happens to be a bit of a playboy. Cullen is keeping a secret mistress out in Las Vegas--former showgirl, Mitsy Vale--but in my story, I also got to write a little about Cullen's brother, Bryan; his cousins, Bridget and Scarlet; his parents, Daniel and Amanda; his grandfather, Patrick; and his friend, John Harlan--most of whom are main characters for some of the other books in this series.
I won't say that my first continuity experience wasn't scary at times, or even more complicated than I'd expected. But it was also a lot of fun. Which is why, when my editor called to ask if I'd like to participate in another continuity for 2007, I jumped at the opportunity. Not everyone enjoys the world of continuities, but I'm learning that I like to write them almost as much as I like to read them.
