Endure By Carrie Jones Blog Tour and Guest Post!

I was so excited when I was asked to be a part of the Endure Blog Tour and to do a special guest post with Carrie Jones.

For those of you who may not know, Endure is the final book in the Need series and while it will be bitter sweet to have the series end it did go out with a bang!

I had so much fun reading this book and was super excited to see what Jones would have in store for Zara and the gang. 

As part of her guest post we got to ask Carrie how you  go about writing the last book in a series and below is her reply.

When I first saw the question about how to write the last book in the series, I wanted to answer: Very very slowly.  Then I realized that I couldn't write a sentence fragment and have two 'very's' in there. My editor would kill me. My agent would kill me. And... my high school English teacher would kill me... slowly, even though he hates adverbs. 

Plus, just writing very very slowly would be a pretty short guest post. 

But, there's a bit of truth to that. By the time you get to the last book of your series, it is so hard to let go. You've been with these characters for years. You have loved with them, mourned with them, and sometimes wanted to throttle them. So, you should savor the last time you get to hang with them. There's a bit of a mourning period.  So, write that last book slowly so you can savor it.

There are other benefits to writing the last book slowly: 

1. Your editor panics that you won't finish.

2. Your agent panics that you won't finish.

3. You panic that you won't finish.

Panic keeps you on your toes. It's good for writers. 

More practically, writing the last book in the series was the easiest for me because it has been set up throughout the series. The elements are all there for you to create that final book. So I'm going to list the things to remember while writing the entire series, so that your last book is a snap. 

1. Make your main character interesting and not perfect. Our characters tend to start out quirky and flawed. They have to grow, but sometimes in series, those characters become overwhelmed by plot, and we don't pay them enough attention because getting them to fight off the zombie unicorns is too important. Don't do this. Make your character so interesting that you don't lose her to the plot. Make her so strong and such a force that you adore her through all these books. In the final book, let us see how she's grown (or not) and let us applaud or boo her for her choices. 

2. Remember the connections between  your final book and the others. The story here is part of the overall story... or at least it usually is. Let those connections resonate in the last book to give it a deeper emotional punch.

3. Find closure for the secondary characters and plots. This makes everyone happy - you, the characters, the readers. Explain the clues that have been there throughout the series.

4. Make sure the story stands on its own as a last book, just like all the other stories before it. 

5. In your effort for closure, don't forget the regular ups and downs of a story. Don't forget that this is the end of something and therefore there should be something grand in it like at the fireworks show on July 4, make the final bang be huge. 

And she most definitely did!

Thank you so much Carrie for stopping by and for letting me be a part of the Endure Blog Tour!!