I’m trying to carve out a proposal over here, which isn’t really a new process for me. What is new, however, is the fact it’s for a trilogy. (I won’t say much about it because I really don’t at this stage, but they’re straight-up contemporary romances. No dead bodies.)

And, wow, this is hard.

Instead of one title, I need three. And they need to complement each other, of course, which makes it all the harder.

Six character names. Six professions to choose. Six people’s worth of physical description. Six backstories. Goals for six people. Motivation for six people. Conflict for six people. And…well, you get the picture.

The three heroes all have names. Number one’s heroine has a full name and number three’s has a first name. Heroes number two and three have jobs. Heroine number one has a job. Heroes number one and three, along with heroine number one have physical descriptions.

It’s crazy! And don’t even get me started on secondary characters.

I’ve had to do something I rarely do—make charts that let me input all those details from above so I can “see” the books as a whole. That’s how I discovered books two and three had the same theme, which wouldn’t do, so I tweaked the storyline of the third one.

Charts or no charts, though, I see a lot of M&Ms in my future.