How writing doesn't go to plan

I have been writing for 32 years.

Some of my earliest stuff holds up surprisingly well. 

See my Williams and Miller series. I wrote it in 2000. I did a mild rewrite. The biggest flaw was gun stuff I thought I had fixed (apparently, I didn't catch everything. And the website I was using at the time lied to me. Damn Russians.) The biggest issue is that it was three times my usual novel length. That solution was easy-- break them up into parts.

And now, there's "HT." 

Those who know the parlance knows it means Hostage Taker. If you didn't, you do now. It was a hostage novel I had written after reading Deaver's "A Maiden's Grave." It is the only case I can point to where I read a book and said "I have my own spin."

Funny thing is that HT was basically the first book in my thriller universe. 

Yeah. You know how I published the MurderCon book, then Pius, then Miller and Williams? Thing is that this is the nearly the exact OPPOSITE order of publication.

Originally I had written my thrillers as...

It Was Only on Stun!

HT

Williams and Miller 1, 2 & 3 (the latter of which isn't published yet).

A Pius Man 1, 2, 3

Yeah. The Pius Trilogy was supposed to be the crowning moment of a massive cast spread out over four other books.

Remember the Kraft Brothers? Merle and Dalf? From my Vampire novels? They debuted in Dances With Werewolves, the second Williams and Miller book. There was also the third brother, Tal. 

Scott Murphy? Showed up in the third Williams and Miller.

For those of you who remember Father Frank Williams in Pius? Brother to the Williams in the thrillers.

Everyone was in this damn series.

Merle was also supposed to make an appearance in The Pius Trilogy, and had appeared in all but the last few drafts. If you wondered why Sean AP Ryan ended up hearing everything by coincidence, that would be because SOMEONE had to know what Merle knew. 

Why did I cut Merle? You mean aside from there being too many people in Pius in the first place? Because when I wrote him in Pius, he had been following up on a lead ... from Dances with Werewolves.

 Which I hadn't released yet.

And then there's HT....

I have a serious problem. Most books of mine that I reread, I hate. I want to spike the whole thing, and kill it with fire. 

I'm reading HT and wondering if I should just forget this one exists.

I think this is why most indie authors have street teams. In part to provide a slightly more objective look.

But yeah, I'm going to have to work on this for a while and see if I shouldn't just throw this down a memory hole

[For the record, all covers are done by my beautiful wife, Vanessa Landry]