Rashid Darden

Novelist

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On writing a series

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When I began writing Birth of a Dark Nation, I imagined it to be the first in a series of novels, much like LJ Smith’s The Vampire Diaries and The Secret Circle series, about vampires and witches, respectively. Those books came out when I was in middle school. I was immediately taken by the story and fell in love with the characters. To this day, nearly 30 years after their publication, I still grasp a piece of amethyst and say “Earth and water, sand and sea/As I will, so let it be.”

The people love a franchise, don’t they? It seems to me that after Smith’s success, the world of children and young adult literature grew up, took the supernatural franchise model, and ran with it. That’s how we get glittery vampires, folks.

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Accountability Check for 2019

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Welp, I didn’t publish anything in 2018.

But:

  • I did make a decision to expand my one-short short story into an anthology, named it Time, selected a phenomenal cover designer, finished editing it, and now nearly done formatting it.
  • I finished editing Yours in the Bond and found a brilliant illustrator to bring the cover to life.
  • I devised a plan to become a full-time writer.
  • I sketched out/outlined the entire cycle of Dark Nation novels, which seems like it’s going to be a ten book series all together. (Some of those were going to be standalone novels, but I decided to string them together in the same universe.)
  • I saw Message from ‘The Legba’ performed!

I think that’s a productive 2018, considering I still had a stressful, but meaningful full-time job. That’s a win.

So for 2019, by this date I should have published the above two projects and completed the first draft for another.

A modest goal, for me, that leads into my full-time goal of writing two to three books a year.

As always, thanks for letting a brother roll with you through this thing called writing. See you in 2019!

Here’s a photo of me on a pot, because why not?