In observance of SeriesPalooza this week I’m extremely honored to have Lauren Baratz-Logsted here to share how her Sisters 8 series came to be.  Please join me in welcoming Lauren!

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I NEVER SET OUT TO WRITE A SERIES

by Lauren Baratz-Logsted

imagesThe idea that I’d wind up having my name associated with a series is a bit of a shock – not that there’s anything wrong with writers who series! It’s just that my entire career has been devoted, for the most part, to not repeating myself, to trying new things. Of the 15 books I’ve had published since 2003, I’ve done comedic adult fiction, literary adult fiction, a short story anthology which I edited as well as contributed to, YA and middle grade. Even within YA, my books published and forthcoming have been so diverse – Angel’s Choice, an earnest contemporary novel about a surprise pregnancy; Secrets of My Suburban Life, a seriocomic sort-of mystery about a cyberstalker; Crazy Beautiful, a contemporary re-visioning of the classic fairy tale Beauty & the Beast; The Education of Bet, a Victorian novel set in London about a girl who impersonates a boy in order to get a proper education – probably no one would believe it’s all the same author were it not for that same improbably long name on each and every spine.

And yet the author of a series I have turned out to be.

Or at least one of three authors of a series.

In December 2006 my YA novelist husband Greg Logsted, our then six-year-old daughter Jackie and I were visiting friends in Crested Butte, Colorado. Our friends had no TV nor any kids in the area. This would have been fine for the intended length of our visit, but a monster blizzard closed down Denver Airport, extending our stay to 10 days. Jackie was a wonderful kid then, and she’s still a wonderful kid now, but 10 days without TV or other little people is a very long stretch for almost any modern child. So by the end there we were looking for fresh ways to entertain ourselves.

sisterseightThat’s when we began brainstorming the idea for a book, just for the fun of it. Jackie thought there should be eight sisters. I thought they should be octuplets. We all thought their parents should disappear on New Year’s Eve, leaving the Eights as they’d be known to solve the mystery behind their parents’ disappearance while struggling to keep the rest of the world from realizing that eight little girls are living home alone. Greg of course thought that they needed a talking refrigerator. And he was right.

Thus was born The Sisters 8.

We kept brainstorming all the way home on the plane and when we finally arrived back in Danbury, like Curious George, I sat down and started to write. This was still supposed to be just for our own amusement, but when I completed the first volume, Annie’s Adventures, it occurred to me that others might enjoy it as well. This, that and the other thing then happened, and before I knew it, we’d sold Annie’s Adventures plus three other titles as the first four in a projected nine-book series for readers aged six to ten to Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. (There will eventually be nine books because we need to do one for each Eight and then one to resolve all the mysteries.)

What I never thought I’d do in my life – write a series – has turned out to be pretty much the greatest joy I’ve ever had as a writer. How lucky am I that I get to create a series with my husband and my kid? How lucky am I that I get to do book signings with Jackie, and open fan mail with her?

And oh that fan mail. In a year it’s generated more letters than all my other books combined. We hear from grandparents and parents, saying their grandkids and kids never liked to read before they discovered the Eights. We hear from little girls all over the country, more than one of whom has declared herself to be “Your #1 fan!!!” There was the girl who wrote, “I would love to meet you, but I know I would FAINT!” A lot of these girls write in enthusiastically screaming caps, like the letter recently from a girl who’d just seen the cover for Book 5, not due out until May: “WOW! O MY GOODNESS THANKYOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!sorry I haven’t been able to check my e-mail for awhile. WHEN I READ THE MESSAGE I ALMOST SCREAMED! thank you so much for sending that to me! almost every night I thought about the book,what it would be about, what Marcia’s gift and power would be,but most of all what the cover would look like! and now that I’ve seen it, I’m even more excited about it!!!! THE COVER IS AMAZING!!!!!!!(my little sister likes it too!!) so,once again THANK YOU!!!!!!! i’ll be SURE to get the next book!!!!!!!!!!!!!” And then she signed it, “your biggest, number 1 fan,” clearly having realized on her own that she wasn’t the only #1 fan so at least she could still lay claim to being the biggest.

Really, it’s not the quantity of the fan mail we receive about The Sisters 8 so much as the quality. Don’t get me wrong, I love writing books for adults and books for teens – I love all the writing I’m privileged to get to do as part of my career – but it’s daily astonishing to think that something my family did just to amuse ourselves has turned into something that has given so much joy to so many little girls, even turning nonreaders into readers.

Thank you so much, Galleysmith, for inviting me to discuss The Sisters 8 here.

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Thank you Lauren for joining me for SeriesPalooza this week.  I can’t wait to get my hands on The Sisters 8 series it sounds like great fun!