Today’s the day for the Insecure Writer’s Support Group (IWSG) where, on the first Wednesday of every month, writers get together to share their insecurities and offer encouragement. The IWSG was created by Alex J. Cavanaugh, and you can learn all about it and sign up for it here.

Now that I’ve finally gotten Book 2 in my Trouble series out into the world, I need to get back to work on my next project. There will be a Book 3, but the trouble is (sorry, no pun intended) that up to this point I haven’t done much with it. Instead, I’ve been working on another story that’s not at all related to the series.

This story, called The Road Once Taken, is also a fantasy adventure, but it takes place in another imaginary world with new characters and has an entirely different feel to it.

I’m about three-quarters of the way through the story, and the characters have been clamoring in my head for a while now for me to finish it.

I’ve already decided that this will be my next project, but I’m a little concerned about switching gears in the middle of a series. I don’t want to annoy those readers who enjoyed the first two books and are looking forward to the next in the series.

So my question is: As a reader, how much would it bother you if an author of a series you were following interrupted the series to write an unrelated — but still in the same genre — book? I’d love to know what you think.

© Lori L. MacLaughlin and Writing, Reading, and the Pursuit of Dreams, 2016. All rights reserved.