Guest Post by Jim Bronyaur!

Today we have a fabulous guest post by the author of the Minivan Mom Mystery Series Jim Bronyaur! He will be talking to us about writing his sequel, the merging of new & old characters, 

and how to develop them!

So without further ado... take it away Jim!!!        

There’s always fun in creating new characters, but when it comes to writing a sequel, there’s the chance to mix new characters with old ones and seeing how they react.

I loaded up the first book in the Minivan Mom Mystery Series with some fun characters – everyone from Eve Bailey herself, to her family, to the town gossip queen, and even to Eve’s sworn enemy, Karen Corothers.

When I wrote the second book in the series, I needed those main characters to be alive and well, but I knew it couldn’t just be about them again.  There had to be something new and fresh happening with these ‘old’ characters in the background moving the story along.

To do this, I created the Jenkins family and their back story.  A family of land owners who appear normal on the outside but are anything but on the inside, maybe much like most families in the world.  The family shows that money doesn’t create happiness and that regret can be a lifelong curse living inside ourselves.

Of course, I had to create the murder victim since it is a murder series.

In the first book, we have this innocent seeming woman, a local resident who perhaps walked off the straight path in life.  There’s tragedy behind Janet in If Errands Could Kill and I didn’t want that same thing to happen in the second book.  For the second book, I imagined it moving a little more quickly.  I figured since we all know who Eve is by now and we all about Marysville, why not just jump right into the story and bring some outside stuff into the book?  What that means is that I created the murder victim as a rich, big wig kind of guy, someone who had a lot to do with a local casino in town that seems to causing trouble and bringing trouble to the innocent town of Marysville. 

Eve doesn’t know who the murdered man is but that doesn’t mean she’s not connected to him… and that’s where the second book really picks up its speed.  In the first book, it was about Eve trying to understand the fact that a normal, kind woman had been killed.  For the second book, it’s Eve working through some of her own past to help the present.

The new characters bring more life to the series and more life to Eve.  The fun part of the book and the series is that in the background, we have the other characters, still living and still functioning within the story – and even helping the story along too.

In other words, writing the sequel just made the ‘family’ within the Minivan Mom Mystery Series bigger and better. 

Yes, plans do exist for a third book, but I cannot share them just yet.  But there will be some of the old characters, and yes, I will be back to work creating new ones.

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Grab your copy of both If ErrandsCould Kill and A Mess to Die For on Amazon… and don’t miss any of the excitement in the Minivan Mom Mystery Series!