With the greatest of regrets, I am ending my long running Sinners sport romances after fifteen years with characters I've come to love. This isn't the first time I've ended a series. Some were only intended for three books like my Mardi Gras books which are still popular. I've had requests for more of these, but ended them long ago and have no really good ideas for more. Queen of the Mardi Gras Ball, Mardi Gras Madness, and Courir de Mardi Gras have aged well.
In another series dilemma a while back, I'd written four books, but the last was turned down by my primary publisher because they didn't want my ghost character to have committed a gentle suicide which is why she was condemned to haunt her family home forever. Without this plot device, the book wouldn't work. After the rejection, I took it to my secondary publisher who was glad to put it into print, but both contracts had clauses that claimed rights to further books in the series. Not wanting to get into legal issues, I retired that series even though I'd planned two more titles.
Which brings me back to the Sinners. I got my first break in publishing with the first title, Goals for a Sinner, a short, light football romance and the sixth book I'd written. Very taken with the quarterback secondary character, I wrote another book about him and his womanizing ways in Wish for A Sinner.. Since then, not a year has gone by without a new Sinners book. This was my bread and butter series which always sold no matter what else I published. People discovered one of the titles and went on to read all of them.
But last year, 2022, my sales tanked. Royalties dropped to one-hundred dollars for the entire year even with a new title being released. Getting reviews has become impossible with all the Amazon restrictions. I know one person who wanted to post a review but was told she had to spend fifty dollars with them before she could post. She hasn't tired since. Of course, there is always the possibility that no one is reading the books or don't like them so they won't review them to spare my feelings. Some of this might be due to the TikTok scam where people bought books and returned them in seven days thus robbing authors of royalties for their work and not hurting Amazon one bit, but I have no sure way of knowing that.
So, I am crafting The Last of the Sinners to bring my characters to an end. It's like losing old friends. In my mind, they live on, winning games, finding love, having children. If anyone wants to know what they are doing after the final chapter, I could tell them.
I will still be writing my Longleigh Chronicles, a Regency series with ten children to marry off. Three more to go in these. With all the research required, they will keep me busy for some time. Expect The Earl's Ugly Mistress to be out next year. But I will still be missing my Sinners.
