Book of the Month: Jaci Burton (Guest Post & Giveaway)

Today I have the immense pleasure of welcoming one of my new favorite authors, Jaci Burton, over for a guest post! Jaci is the author of the fabulously sexy and exciting Play-By-Play series and her second release in the series, Changing the Game, just came out yesterday! (Review coming August 24th, and let me just say - FAB!) You can check out my review of the first novel, The Perfect Play *here*. As you know, Changing the Game is our Book of the Month and will be featured throughout the month of August, so now...on to Jaci's guest post! 

The Series. The Panic. The Fun.

By Jaci Burton


For an author, releasing the second book, or a third or a fourth (insert etc etc etc) in a series is always a sticky thing. The first book in a series is an easy thing. No one’s met the characters before. Everything’s brand new, and there’s no back story to catch everyone up on. All you have to do is sit back and introduce your new world to readers—and of course, hope they love it.

But then there’s book two, where I’m at right now with Changing The Game , book two in my Play-by-Play series. Readers have met the previous characters, and secondary characters who are now the stars of their own show. There are expectations, and readers that may pick up this book who might not have read the first book.

So you have to lay down some back story and introduce readers to the world, without boring readers who’ve been through it all already. It’s a fine line you walk when you write a series.

But oh how I love writing a series. I’m not much for writing one-book-and-out stories. I know some readers like them, but for me it’s just not fun. I can’t say I’ve never done it before, because I have. But if you look through my list of fifty-something books, you’ll see the large majority of them are part of a series. There’s a reason I write them. How they come about is two-fold.

The first is purely by accident. For some reason, I can’t toss a hero and heroine into a book without having…extra players show up. I mean, no one lives in a vacuum, right? A hero and heroine don’t develop a relationship with each other, then go about their daily lives just interacting with each other (unless they’re stranded on a desert island together). There tend to be other people in their lives—extra characters who add color to a story. And those extra characters tend to grow and expand as I’m writing the book, developing personalities and quirks and back stories of their own. Before long I begin to piece together who I’d like to pair those secondary characters up with. Then voila. I’ve started a series.

The second way is by design. Some of my series are contracted that way. With my Wild Riders series series, I knew from the start exactly how many Wild Riders characters there were and how many books there would be, and I had a pretty good idea in which order I’d write their books. That was one series I was really organized about (trust me, this typically doesn’t happen).  My Play-by-Play series is a little more lax. I of course knew I wanted this to be a three book series, with Mick, Gavin and Jenna Riley having their stories. Now it turns out there will be at least four books in this series (and I hope more!), so I’ve developed another character. And this series goes on.

That’s the thing about series. Sometimes they develop lives of their own. They become organic, worlds with fully realized main and secondary characters who live and breathe and demand their stories to be told.

See why I love writing series?

Jaci Burton

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Purchase Changing the Game and The Perfect Play now! 

~*GIVEAWAY*~

Jaci is graciously offering a giveaway to readers! One lucky commenter will win a copy of The Perfect Play! And as a special treat I will be giving away the matching book thong from my Etsy shop to the winner! (Items will be shipped separately.)

To enter, just leave a meaningful comment or question (with an email address) for Jaci! 

Giveaway with close at 11:59pm on August 30th, one winner will then be selected at random and contact via the email address provided. They will then have 48 hours to respond before another winner is chosen. Good luck!