When is a series not a series?

The Matfen Affair word count is almost 50,000 and the end is in sight. Another twenty or thirty thousand should do it. When I published The Craigsmuir Affair I had no idea of a series, but I loved the title, which I thought had so many connotations.

The Gybford story languished with a Canadian independent publisher for a couple of years but I felt  it deserved more attention than it was receiving, so I reclaimed it and then decided to go ahead and publish it on Kindle after an edit, a new cover and a new title.

I was drawn to the simple but effective title The Gybford Affair but the idea of a series still had not really hit home. The characters were different in each title, there was absolutely no link between them. No character in Craigsmuir knew or was related to the characters in Gybford. The settings were actually ninety years apart.

When I began The Matfen Affair, the idea of a series title could not be denied. But I liked it. In fact, I loved it. In each of the titles - Craigsmuir, Gybford and Matfen – it is the place that is the star, or the series link if you want to call it that. That, and the general genre is the only claim to a series.

Choose one of the three and you will find that they are all historical romances with a mystery or an adventure thrown in. With Craigsmuir it is Daisy and her dream of being an artist while getting caught up in a series of art thefts at Craigsmuir and meeting the man with whom she will fall in love. 

In Gybford it is the rich heiress who swears she will stay at her beloved Gybford and not marry again and then gradually falls in love with one man, who  is dedicated to his lost wife, only to be courted and kidnapped by another that she despises.

Matfen is the country house hosting a wedding where Leigh is the bridesmaid who struggles with the house’s ghosts while battling the misadventures of her sister and cousin and finally discovering the man she loves.