The Pros and Cons of Writing a Series By Rob Hart

Jim: Today we welcome Rob Hart to 7 Criminal Minds. Rob is the author of the terrific five-book Ash McKenna series of PI novels. As great as those books were, Rob wanted to reach a larger audience via a Big Five publisher. (Wouldn’t we all?) He certainly accomplished that—and how—with his breakout hit, The Warehouse. I’ll let him tell us about the challenges and rewards of writing a series. His latest release, Three Hitmen and a Baby, is the third of Assassins Anonymous series. Three Hitmen and a Baby hits bookstores next Tuesday, June 16. 

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My first novel came out in 2015. New Yorked was a punk-rock hardboiled novel following an amateur private investigator named Ash McKenna. It was an origin story, about the kind of person who might become a PI later in life.

It was received pretty well for a small press book, and I wrote four more in the series, closing out with Potter’s Field in 2018. I had sent Ash around the country, and then the world, before bringing him back home.

It was immensely rewarding, and I loved telling his story.

And when I was done, I never wanted to write a series again.

My next two books, The Warehouse and The Paradox Hotel, were standalones. They were bigger swings, and got me into the Big Five league of publishing.

The thing about writing a series is: unless you’re picked up as a TV show or a movie, or you really explode with readers for some unknowable reason, then there’s a degree of diminishing returns. You’ll watch your sales dip slowly, release after release, because it’s harder to get a new reader to tune into the third book in a series. They feel overwhelmed at the idea that they might need to read two other books just to understand what’s happening.

And given that we’re all currently being crushed under the heel of relentless late-stage capitalism, who even has time to read anymore? Every series book you write should work as a standalone, and I’m sure some people picked up the second or third or fourth book, not knowing about the others, and probably had a good time.

But it can eventually feel like you’re inviting people to a Tupperware party.

Plus, it’s hard to remember stuff over the course of five books! By the time I got to the fifth, I could barely remember what I put in the first. So it was nice, with The Warehouse and The Paradox Hotel, to build a sandbox, blow it up, and walk away.

Then came Assassins Anonymous.

It’s probably the best elevator pitch I’ve ever come up with: a John Wick-level assassins gets into a 12-step recovery program for killers. I wrote the book the same way I always do, assuming it would be the last book I ever write because why in the world does anyone let me do this for a living? 

But Putnam had signed me to a two-book deal, so when it came time to discuss that second book, the word “sequel” was floated. And that’s the thing about the Assassins concept; it supports a series. You’ve got multiple killers from different walks of life, you’ve got the 12 steps to work, and the container created by the program and the no-killing vow.

It didn’t hurt that when Steven Spielberg and Amblin optioned it, they were envisioning a series of films, and were keen for me to build out more of the world.

So last year we got The Medusa Protocol, still featuring Mark, the narrator of the first book, but shifting the camera a bit to include another member, and her POV.

Come June 16, the third book hits: Three Hitmen and a Baby. And I’ve already filed the fourth, called City of Killers, due to come out, most likely, next June. 

There’s something really comforting about writing a series. It’s like slipping on a well-worn pair of shoes. I know these voices, I know these characters. I enjoy digging deeper into who they are, and looking for new aspects of their lives—and their recovery—to explore.

I got lucky, too: when the first book in the series came out in paperback last year, Barnes & Noble picked it as their June mystery and thriller pick. We moved an enormous amount of copies, and it’s still selling pretty well, a year later.

Had that not happened, I’m not sure we would have made it to a third and fourth book.

The Medusa Protocol did not sell as many copies. Again, second book in a series. But we’re hopeful that since so many people picked up the first, it’s going to be a slow burn, and it’ll continue to do steady sales.

Now my contract with Putnam is up, and I’m at a crossroads. I like working with them, and I love my editor Daphne, so it’d be nice to stick around. I could write more Assassins books. I also wrote an ending for the fourth book that, if we decided to move on, or even hit pause for a bit, I think it would be satisfying to readers who’ve stuck with the characters.

I’m not tired of writing them, but we need to look at what the market will support, and how the movie is developing. Plus, I’ve got a lot of ideas. It’d be nice to mix in a standalone or two. Blow up some sandboxes. Try out some new stuff.

Who knows. I’ll figure it out. I’ve got time.

Now, this is where we bring it back to being somewhat instructional, because as a freelance editor and a mentor in Seton Hill’s MFA program, that’s just how I roll…

A lot of aspiring authors envision their first book to be the start of a series, and I get asked this all the time: should I pitch it as a series, write multiple books, etc?

And the answer is no. The chances of selling a series straight out of the gate is pretty low—especially if you’re a debut. Most publishers don’t want to commit to the second book in a series until they see how the first one does… or if you can even sell books in the first place.

You can write that sequel or trilogy or quadilogy or whatever. But that first book needs to work as a standalone. It needs to feel satisfying if it ends up being the only part of the story. No cliffhangers. No prologues.

When you’re querying agents or talking to editors, it’s okay to say a book has series potential, or that you’re working on a second one in case there’s interest in more. But don’t expect anyone to pick it up sight-unseen.

Thems the breaks. Publishing is a business, not a meritocracy.

And you need to go into it knowing that while writing a series is fun, you might not get lucky enough to finish it.

That all sounds very discouraging. I don’t mean it to. Go out there, have fun, leave your heart on the field. Because while writing a series can be a little challenging, and there are things to keep in mind about the reality, it can also be a hell of a lot of fun.

Oh, one final note: the Ash books are currently out of print. Bummer! When Polis closed I decided to hold onto my rights, because there’s been some movement on the TV side—some very cool people are attached to a brilliant pilot script. So I’m waiting to see how that works out before seeing if someone will bring them back into print.

Say a little prayer, cross your fingers, or just send some good vibes…

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Rob Hart is the USA TODAY bestselling author of the Assassins Anonymous series. The latest entry, Three Hitmen and a Baby, comes out June 16. He also wrote The Warehouse, which was translated into more than 20 languages, and The Paradox Hotel, which was nominated for both a Lambda Literary Award and Japan's Seiun Award. He co-wrote Scott Free with James Patterson, the novel Dark Space with Alex Segura, the comic book Blood Oath, also with Segura, and the novel Detour with Jeff Rake, creator and showrunner of TV's Manifest. He currently teaches in Seton Hill's Writing Popular Fiction MFA, and lives in Jersey City. Find him at www.robwhart.com.