Inspired by Harris
Sometimes it’s hard to know what the best concept is going to be for a solid novel. Along with my wife, I’ve recently discovered Charlaine Harris as an author and her story in an intriguing one.
Harris got into print and had early success with two mystery series, Aurora Teagarden and Lilly Bard. Aurora Teagarden is about a librarian who inadvertently solves crimes, while Lilly Bard is a cleaning woman who does likewise.
Both were keeping her in print and both were selling enough to keep the contract renewals coming, but Harris was unsatisfied. So she took a risk and started two new series; both mixed mysteries with the supernatural, which her earlier books didn’t do. The results were the Harper Connelly series, which features a woman who can sense the dead; and the Southern Vampire/Sookie Stackhouse series, which focuses on a clairvoyant waitress and her vampire companion.
Yup, in both series, the main characters still solve crimes. Both series sell better for her than her previous series, and the Sookie Stackhouse series will, this fall, become the basis for an HBO Original Series, True Blood.
You never know which idea is going to be your million-dollar concept; if Harris had let her early success lull her into a false sense of complacency, she might never have produced her most successful novel series to date, and that would be a shame, kind of like owning unlocked cell phones that never get used.
