Messy multiplicity: strategies for serialisation in new adult

Citation of the final chapter: McAlister, Jodi 2018, Messy multiplicity: strategies for serialisation in new adult fiction. In Parey, Armelle (ed), Prequels, coquels and sequels in contemporary anglophone fiction, Routledge, New York, N.Y., pp.142-162.

This is the accepted manuscript of a chapter published by Routledge in Prequels, coquels and sequels in contemporary anglophone fiction in 2018, available at: https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429438059

© 2018, Routledge

Downloaded from DRO: http://hdl.handle.net/10536/DRO/DU:30114791

DRO Deakin Research Online, Deakin University’s Research Repository Deakin University CRICOS Provider Code: 00113B Messy Multiplicity: Strategies for Serialisation in New Adult Fiction

Jodi McAlister

“Hooray! They got together! Finally! We’ve watched them Meet Cute, groaned at the arrival of the Romantic False Lead, sat through seasons upon chapters of Will They or Won’t They?, shouted hurray at their Now or Never Kiss and this is the moment we’ve all been waiting for! And for good reason, because now…

Um, because now…

Uh.” (“Shipping Bed Death”)

This is the beginning of the entry for the phenomenon called “Shipping Bed Death” on the popular cultural media analysis website TV Tropes.1 It highlights a major problem for serialisation in the romantic across multiple forms of media: while the and tension inherent in a romantic couple’s arc before they declare their love for each other drives the narrative forward, once that conflict is resolved, the narrative has nowhere to go.

This is an issue of , which narrative theorist H. Porter Abbott calls “the engine of narrative” (160). Suspense, Abbott writes, “is time-intensive; it is the pleasing ache of wanting to know what has happened or what will happen next, and has the straining to look back or ahead” (160, emphasis in original). Before a couple gets together, the reader/viewer/consumer is engaged, wanting to know whether and how a relationship will be established, anticipating the fulfilment of an arc of romantic tension. Once the couple is together, however, this constellation of possibilities is closed down, and the narrative runs the risk of losing its impetus.

This problem exists across all forms of narrative, but perhaps the most famous example of this comes from 1980s American television series Moonlighting, which has lent its name to this issue in popular parlance. The “Moonlighting effect” or “Moonlighting syndrome” refers to the problem texts face once the central couple has established their relationship. Moonlighting was driven in large part by the romantic tension between its , Maddie (Cybill Shepherd) and David (Bruce Willis). Although it was nominally

1 Despite the name of the website, TV Tropes analyses many forms of media, including , which will be the focus of this chapter.

1 a mystery series, the suspense of this will-they-won’t-they romance drove the show: as J.P. Williams remarked, “[t]he only thing Moonlighting is consistently about is the relationship between Maddie Hayes and David Addison” (97). Once Maddie and David declared their love for each other, however, the show’s popularity began to sharply decline, as with the central couple together, the will-they-won’t-they issue had been resolved.

This is obviously an issue regularly faced by television – in recent years, shows like Castle, Bones, and The Mindy Project, among numerous others, have had to negotiate the Moonlighting effect – as it is a medium relies on the evasion of closure to keep the serial format moving forward. However, I wish to focus here on the issue of serialisation in text rather than on the screen: a space which, comic books and graphic novels aside, largely does not have this same impetus.

This is especially true for the genre of romance fiction, which, given its mandatory happily-ever-after endings, has historically not sought to evade closure. This chapter will explore the strategies for serialisation offered by a recently-emerged sub-genre of the popular romance genre: new adult (NA) fiction. After a brief explanation of what NA is and how it stands in relation to other popular literary categories, including romance and young adult (YA) fiction, it will consider the ways in which serialisation is a defining factor of NA as a genre and the ways in which it uses multiple serialisation strategies, including variations on coquel- and sequelisation, simultaneously to fulfil its generic mandates.

What is new adult fiction?

New adult fiction is a relatively recent generic and marketing phenomenon. While I do not have space here to give a full account of its complex and fascinating industrial history, I will provide a brief background, both for purposes of context and in order to understand the space it occupies on the generic borders of romance fiction and YA. While serialisation is popular in both these categories, it operates in different ways, and so an account of the history of NA is useful so as to highlight the way it is essentially caught between two opposing structures.

The emergence of the term “new adult” can be credited to St Martin’s Press, a subsidiary of Big Five publisher Macmillan. In 2009, St Martin’s held a contest for submissions, where they were:

2 …actively looking for great, new, cutting edge fiction with protagonists who are slightly older than YA and can appeal to an adult audience. Since twenty-somethings are devouring YA, St. Martin’s Press is seeking fiction similar to YA that can be published and marketed as adult—a sort of an “older YA” or “new adult” (Jae-Jones, 2009a).2

As the name “new adult” suggests, YA was the original generic reference point for NA. YA is a much-serialised literary category. As best-selling YA series such as Harry Potter, Twilight, The Hunger Games, and Divergent show, the most popular YA serialisation strategy is to follow one or more protagonists through various sets of adventures: we follow Harry Potter through his seven years at Hogwarts, Katniss Everdeen through two iterations of the Hunger Games and the ensuing revolution, Tris Prior through societal collapse and cascading revelations of various tiers of power and control. Romantic plots often occur, as in Twilight, where the relationship between Bella Swan and Edward Cullen (with occasional interventions from Jacob Black) is the dominant textual concern. However, closure is typically deferred or delayed in order that the narrative might continue, often with interventions from other generic structures. In Twilight, for instance, the final third of the final book, Breaking Dawn, is concerned not with whether Bella and Edward will live happily ever after with each other – this is settled – but whether they will live at all, due to the menacing advances of the Volturi, the world’s vampire authority.

However, YA is not the only literary category to have a major effect on shaping NA – or, arguably, even the most influential one. Although St Martin’s are credited with coining the term, they published no new books as a result of their competition. Instead, “new adult” slowly came to be used to describe the emerging works of self-published authors like Cora Carmack, Colleen Hoover, and Jamie McGuire, which became suddenly and explosively popular in the NA boom of 2012-13, with books reaching – and, in some cases, topping – numerous bestseller lists for multiple weeks.3 Carmack’s Losing It, which she self-published in October 2012, follows college senior Bliss, who, after deciding to lose her virginity in a one-night stand, panics and leaves her would-be lover in her bed – only to discover the next day that he is her new theatre professor. The book proved extraordinarily popular, and within a matter of weeks Carmack signed first with a literary agent, and then a three-book deal with

2 S. Jae-Jones, whose website I am quoting here, was the assistant to St Martin's executive Dan Weiss, who developed and championed the concept of NA. 3 I have written at length about the industrial history of this boom elsewhere (McAlister, forthcoming).

3 HarperCollins (Lamb). Hoover self-published Slammed, which, like Losing It, features heroine Layken falling for a hero who turns out to be her teacher, in January 2012, followed by its sequel Point of Retreat in February 2012. Both books were acquired at auction and republished by Atria Books (an imprint of Simon & Schuster) in August 2012 (Atria Books). A third book in the series – This Girl – was published by Atria in April 2013. Atria also acquired the rights to and republished McGuire’s Beautiful Disaster, a romance between college freshman and “good girl” Abby and “Eastern University’s Walking One-Night Stand” Travis, an MMA fighter (“Beautiful Disaster”). This book was originally self-published as an e-book in May 2011 and as a trade paperback in October 2011, before Atria republished it in 2012 (Deahl). Its sequel, Walking Disaster, was also published by Atria in April 2013.

We can see a common thread in the works of these three authors, who, among other authors with similar publication trajectories, such as J. Lynn, Abbi Glines, and Tammara Webber, we can consider formative for NA as a category. All these new adult texts are dominated by romantic plots. This was not necessarily how St Martin’s initially envisioned NA. S. Jae-James (assistant to Dan Weiss, the instigator of the St Martin’s competition) wrote on her blog when thinking through how the nascent category of NA might be shelved, that in “YA… all of the genres are shelved together: contemporary, , , romance, etc” (2009b). Even the most cursory look at YA shelves will an enormous generic mix, tied together only by the age of the protagonists and/or intended age of the readers. NA, however, has not followed this pattern, and does not share YA’s breadth, despite what St Martin’s originally intended. The works of Carmack, Hoover, and McGuire, mentioned above, are more illustrative of the path that NA has followed. With very few exceptions, NA novels are contemporary. While not mandatory, college settings are very popular, and protagonists almost always live outside their family home, whether in university dorms, sharehouses, or some other form of accommodation. And, most importantly, almost without fail, NA novels have a romance at the centre of their narrative. This demonstrates clearly the relationship that NA has to another publishing phenomenon: popular romance fiction.

The romance narrative is what we might think of as a closed narrative, as it is to an enormous extent defined by its ending. This is particularly true of the modern romance – as Pamela Regis writes, “[t]he happy ending is the one formal feature of the that virtually everyone can identify” (9). The Romance Writers of America (RWA) asserts that every romance novel contains two essential elements: a central love story and an

4 optimistic and emotionally satisfying ending (“About the Romance Genre”). This ending – typically referred to in the romance writing and reading community as the HEA (happily ever after) or, in some cases, the HFN (happy for now) – is one in which the central protagonists establish a strong, loving romantic relationship. Typically, there is an implicit promise that this relationship will last forever, although the emergence of the HFN has called the “ever after” element of the HEA into question: for instance, in Jennifer Echols’ Biggest Flirts, the book concludes with heroine Tia promising to date hero Will for three days. (These HFN endings are more common in NA than in other forms of the romance genre, arguably because of the emphasis on the relative youth of the protagonists – perhaps something from YA which inflects the category.)

It is worth noting here that, although they would not technically be considered part of the romance genre by the majority of readers, there are romantic novels which do not feature a happy ending – Jojo Moyes’ Me Before You and the oeuvre of Nicholas Sparks are among some of the more famous examples. However, it is key that these novels also have definitive endings: they end tragically. These are not texts which end ambiguously or on . The romance narrative has, as I have written elsewhere, a finite structure: its defining feature is that it ends (McAlister 2015, cf. also Goris, Pearce).

Because of its preoccupation with endings, romance does not seem like a genre especially fit for serialisation – how would one combat the Moonlighting effect in a space like this one? As An Goris writes:

Serialization has the potential to destabilize the romance form by subverting one of the genre’s defining narrative features, the happy end. In this process, the romance reader’s desire for closure is threatened by the serial’s incessant delay of closure and the concomitant deferral of satisfaction. The romance novel’s penchant for formulating a definitive narrative dénouement in turn potentially undermines the serial’s characteristic resistance to ending and might wreak havoc on its typical interaction with its reader (n.p.).

However, despite this, serialisation is an increasingly popular practice in the genre. As Goris also observes, between 1988 and 1992, only 17% of the romance novels that won RITA awards – the prestigious awards offered by the RWA – belonged to a series. Between 1998 and 2002, this figure had risen to 40%, while between 2008 and 2012, it was no less than 63%, making serialisation “not only… almost omnipresent in the genre but also… one of its

5 most successful commercial ventures yet” (Goris n.p.). So why, in a genre which adheres to such a finite structure, has serialisation become so popular – and how does it operate?

The answer to the first question – why – is less interesting than the second, as it can be explained by quite simple market forces. Just as the evolution of the three-volume novel in the nineteenth century came about for economic reasons, so too can we read the popularity of the serialisation in romance: romance is a highly commercial genre, and readers who become attached to a specific group of characters will read – and, more importantly, buy – the next books in the series. As Jennifer Hayward argues, serialisation is an “immensely effective means of catching and keeping an audience” (3). How the romance series operates, however, is more complicated, given the genre’s impulse towards ending.

NA, while it owes much of its existence to YA, is overwhelmingly governed by the same rules as romance, as set out by the RWA. While there are some key differences between NA and what we might think of as “romance proper” – for instance, romance novels are almost exclusively written in third person, while NA novels are, like many YA novels, generally written in first person, either from the perspective of one (usually a heroine, as in Jamie McGuire’s Beautiful Disaster) or alternating between the perspectives of both protagonists, as in Jessica Sorenson’s The Coincidence of Callie and Kayden – I argue that it is now more accurate in generic terms to think of NA as a satellite category of romance than of YA. The vast majority of NA novels have a central love story and an optimistic and emotionally satisfying ending. This means that NA faces many of the same issues that romance proper does in serialisation. However, unlike its parent genre, in which serialisation strategies are relatively clear, modes of serialisation in NA are messy and complex, and multiple modes are often employed simultaneously (even in cases where said modes appear to be virtually incompatible).

As with romance, we can read serialisation in NA as an essentially commercial phenomenon. As I have mentioned here, and expanded on at length elsewhere, NA exploded on bestseller lists in 2012, its popularity extremely abrupt (McAlister, forthcoming). This meant that authors suddenly found their works in high demand, with a readership hungry for more books in the same , in the same world, and following the same (or secondary) characters. Given this, the messy and multiple nature of some NA strategies is relatively easy explicable: it is a process which began because authors were scrambling to catch up to market demand. As NA has developed as a literary category, we can observe strategies broadly

6 becoming more consistent, especially with books published through traditional presses. However, this messy multiplicity has by no means disappeared altogether, and complex and disparate serialisation strategies continue to be used in NA series. In the following section, I will outline these strategies, and explore how they operate in conjunction.

Strategies for serialisation

In her article on serialisation in the romance genre, An Goris identifies three types of series:

1. The -based series. This type of series features a central group of recurring characters, and each new instalment of the series functions as a standalone novel, focusing on one of these recurring characters and relating their complete romance narrative. As well as the recurring characters, the series might also be connected by a non-romance sub-. However, each novel can be understood alone, and the reader does not have to read all the books in the series, or read them in order, to understand an individual text, although it might enhance their appreciation of it (Goris). For instance, Victoria Dahl’s Donovan Brothers trilogy follows siblings Tessa, Jamie, and Eric Donovan (hero/ines of Good Girls Don’t, Bad Boys Don’t, and Real Men Will respectively), as they work together to run their family craft beer brewery. Each book contains the romance narrative of an individual Donovan sibling, but the series also contains the overarching of the brewery, and it is not until the end of the series in Real Men Will that this subplot is satisfyingly wrapped up (Ficke). As Goris puts it, this series – like the character-based series as a whole – “avoids the serial urge to separate the happy end from the rest of the narrative, [but] incorporates the series’ typifying narrative dynamic by leaving other narrative questions unanswered” (n.p.). 2. The romance-based series. This type of series focuses on one single couple, developing their romantic narrative over multiple instalments. The HEA might not be reached until several instalments into the series, and even then, this does not necessarily mean the series has concluded, as future novels in the series might relate further adventures of the couple. Because of the postponement of the HEA, the position of such series within romance proper is problematic, and the books often overlap with other genres, such as crime/mystery or urban fantasy. Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander novels, for instance, which follows the ongoing adventures of time-travelling twentieth century heroine Claire and her eighteenth-century husband Jamie, are often read as fantasy or , and

7 the author herself denies that the books are romance novels (McAlister 2016). Similarly, J.D. Robb’s In Death series follows police detective heroine Eve Dallas and hero Roarke. Eve and Roarke marry between the third and fourth books; however, the series now has over forty novels, and the series is often considered crime or science fiction (and indeed, J.D. Robb is a pseudonym for prolific and popular romance author Nora Roberts, signalling a step away from romance proper). However, despite their troubled position within the genre itself, romance-based series are often engaged with by romance readers. This, as Goris argues, “inscribes these novels in the romance genre” (n.p.). 3. The hybrid series. This combines the character-based and romance-based series. As in the character-based series, each instalment focuses on the romance narrative of a single character in a group of recurring characters, but there is also, as a subplot, the representation of romantic events between at least one other couple, who might later go on to get their own instalment (Goris). For example, Suzanne Brockmann’s Troubleshooter series follows US Navy Seal Team 16. Each member of the group gets their book, but a consistent subplot throughout the first five books is the growing sexual and romantic tension between Seal Sam Starrett and FBI agent Alyssa Locke. They later go on to star in their own book (the sixth instalment in the series, Gone Too Far); however, as the groundwork for their relationship is laid in these earlier books, we can consider their romantic narrative to have exceeded the bounds of a single romance novel.4 Hybrid series, as Goris contends, have “the best of both worlds”, as they include both the immediate gratification of the HEA of the character-based serial and the desire to move from instalment to instalment in search of an eventual HEA engendered by the romance- based series (n.p.).

Given that NA is, on the whole, governed by the same formal mandate as romance – that is, that the narrative must have a central love story, and it must end happily – it is useful to consider these serialisation strategies as we read in the genre. Broadly speaking, the typology offered by Goris maps reasonably well to NA, and we can see many of the same techniques in use to negotiate the narrativisation of the HEA while simultaneously maintaining a serial strategy. However, while serial strategies tend to be applied one at a time in romance proper, NA series frequently adopt several strategies at once. In addition, NA also regularly uses another strategy that is not typically seen in romance proper.

4 For more details on the Troubleshooters series, see Husband & Husband, p. 102.

8 To study the serialisation strategies in NA, I selected a corpus of fifty books: the fifty books most commonly shelved as “new-adult” on the popular online library/digital bookclub website Goodreads (as of April 6, 2017). There are some limitations to this approach – for instance, the longer a book has been in print, the more likely it is to have been shelved by a reader on Goodreads, which privileges older books and accounts for the prevalence of books published in 2012-13 on this list. However, this is outweighed by the fact that books on this list have been identified by a large number of readers as belonging to the NA category, which works to ensure that the texts in this corpus are indicative of generic practices.5

Full details of my corpus of fifty books are included as an appendix to this paper. In this appendix, I have captured the name of each book, the author, the year published, the name of the series it belongs to, its position in the series, the primary serialisation strategy used, and the secondary serialisation strategy used (if any). I use the term primary serialisation strategy to refer to the strategy most relevant to the individual text in question, while the term secondary serialisation strategy refers to a strategy that might be used elsewhere in the series.

Of the fifty books in this corpus, forty-five were part of a series. In this instance, the way that this corpus privileges older texts is something of a bonus, as it shows that serialisation has been part of new adult since the inception of the category: so much so that it is arguably foundational.

Three primary serialisation strategies are evident in NA:

1. The “connected characters” strategy. This is a strategy for sequelisation, and mirrors what Goris calls the “character-based” series, although it might also include aspects of the “hybrid" series on occasion. Where this strategy is used, each book in a series follows the romantic narrative of a member of a particular group of recurring characters. This group is typically made up of friends, but might also be a sporting team, band, or similar. Elle Kennedy’s Off-Campus series, of which three books appear in the corpus of fifty, is a good example of a connected characters series: it follows the romantic of four

5 This is not a perfect measure: three of the books in the corpus would probably be more properly identified as YA than NA (and indeed are more usually shelved that way in Goodreads). These three books – Sarah J. Maas’ A Court of Thorns and Roses and A Court of Mist and Fury, and Rainbow Rowell’s Fangirl – are worldwide bestsellers, and so their inclusion on this list is indicative of their immense popularity (if even a small portion of their readership shelved them as NA, they would appear in the corpus). Nonetheless, this is interesting in and of itself, as it shows there is a continuing relationship between YA and NA – NA does not entirely fall under the umbrella of romance.

9 members of a college hockey team who also live together in a house (as the name of the series suggests) off-campus, rather than in university dorms. There is also a more tenuous connection among some of their heroines – for example, the heroine of The Score (the third book), Allie, is best friends with Hannah, the heroine of the first book, The Deal. The ongoing success of the heroes as hockey players is a running subplot throughout the series, and epilogues typically flash forward a couple of years into the future to demonstrate both their continuing careers and romantic relationships. 2. The “same characters” strategy. This is also a strategy for sequelisation, and mirrors Goris’ “romance-based series” to an extent. These books follow the same characters through a series of events, and through a series of romantic milestones. As with Goris’ formulation, the establishment of the relationship might occur not at the end of the series, but somewhere earlier, allowing for much of the ensuing narrative to take place in what she calls the “post-HEA”, a narrative space which allows us to access the protagonists’ lives after the triumphant ending of the HEA. However, in “same characters” NA books, it is common for each book in the series to mimic the structure of an individual romance, with conflict driving the characters apart so much that it seems as if their relationship is no longer possible, until a HEA is achieved at the end of the book. Colleen Hoover’s Slammed series, of which two books appear in this corpus, is a good example of this: in the first book, Slammed, heroine Layken and hero Will are forced to overcome obstacles to build a romantic relationship, and in the second book, Point of Retreat, they are effectively taken back to square one to build their relationship all over again, rather than giving the reader insight into their life post-HEA. (The third book, This Girl, adopts a different serialisation strategy, which points to the difficulty of redoing the romance arc over and over again with the same characters.) In Abbi Glines’ Too Far series, of which two books appear in the corpus, heroine Blaire and hero Rush do not properly establish their relationship until the end of the second book, Never Too Far, in what is effectively a HFN. In the third book Forever Too Far, as in Hoover’s Point of Retreat, the arc of the romance is repeated as Blaire and Rush are forced apart before they can re-establish their relationship (this time in a HEA – as with Hoover’s series, the fourth book in the series, Rush Too Far, adopts a different serialisation strategy). This shows that this “same characters” strategy is different from the one typically used in romance proper: instead of offering an opportunity to look at what happens after happily ever after and the concretisation of the romantic relationship, in NA, the romance arc is effectively reiterated and repeated.

10 3. The “POV switch” strategy. This is a strategy for coquelisation. It is not found in romance proper, probably because romance novels tend to be told in third person, with insight into the thoughts of both hero and heroine. NA, on the other hand, is much more likely to be told in first person. Often, a given book will include the first person perspectives of both hero and heroine (see, for example, Jet by Jay Crownover, which, despite the fact that it – and every other book in the Marked Men series – is named after the hero, features the first person perspective of both hero Jet and heroine Ayden). However, in some instances, particularly early in the publishing history of NA, it was reasonably common for books to be told solely from the perspective of one character, usually the heroine. This made the opportunity for a retelling from the other character’s perspective available. This is the structure of Jamie McGuire’s Beautiful duology, both books of which are in the corpus of fifty: the first book, Beautiful Disaster, relates the story of the central romance as told by heroine Abby, while the second, Walking Disaster, retells it from the perspective of hero Travis. This is a limited strategy for serialisation, as there are only two characters available from which to retell the story of a romance; however, it is one which sets NA distinctly apart from romance, and perhaps gestures to its other heritage in YA (for instance, Twilight author Stephenie Meyer was infamously working on Midnight Sun, a version of Twilight retold from Edward’s perspective, before her incomplete draft was leaked on the internet and she abandoned the project).6

This seems like a fairly simple typology of serialisation structures, which offer a variety of ways to navigate the Moonlighting effect and the problem of serialising in a genre which is defined by its ending. The connected characters strategy offers a new romance narrative in every book and so can be read alone, while offering an occasional pleasurable glance into the post-HEA space of couples from earlier books for readers who are reading the books in their serial context. The same characters strategy, while it may extend the romance narrative over a (usually small – rarely more than two) books, will bring it to the point of the happy ending, before effectively starting all over again in later books as new obstacles to the relationship are discovered. The POV switch strategy sidesteps the problem of the Moonlighting effect by revisiting the same, original romance narrative, reliving the same building tension and anticipation as its predecessor. The same characters and POV switch strategies both have obvious limitations as modes of serialisation – there are only so many times two characters

6 Meyer later released a gender-flipped version of Twilight, Life and Death, in honour of the tenth anniversary of Twilight’s release, where heroine Bella and hero Edward became hero Beau and heroine Edythe. To my knowledge, this strategy has not been adopted in NA (or, indeed, elsewhere in YA).

11 can break up and get back together before the reader is exhausted by it, and only so many times the same story can be retold – and so understandably, the connected characters strategy is the most popular in NA. As can be seen in Figure 1 below, almost half of the books (23) in my corpus used a connected characters strategy as their primary serialisation strategy.

Primary Serialisation Strategy

Connected characters POV switch Same characters Standalone

Figure 1: Primary serialisation strategies in corpus of fifty NA novels

However, what is remarkable about NA is the way that it regularly utilises several different serialisation strategies within the same series. In the fifty books in my corpus, just over half of the books (28) also included a secondary serialisation strategy. As mentioned above, I have defined as the primary serialisation strategy the one most directly relevant to that particular book, while a secondary strategy might occur elsewhere in the series. For instance, the first two books of Tammara Webber’s Contours of the Heart series are part of my corpus. The second book, Breakable, is a retelling from hero Lucas’ perspective of the first book, Easy, which is told from heroine Jacqueline’s perspective. “POV switch” is thus identified as the primary strategy. However, the third book in the series (Sweet) is a standalone romantic narrative focusing on other characters from the first two books, and so I identified “connected characters” as the secondary strategy.

As with the primary strategy, connected characters is the most popular secondary strategy, probably because of the almost infinite possibilities for repetition it offers. It often comes into effect later in series, after the romance narratives of the original protagonists (whether through a same characters or POV switch strategy) have been effectively exhausted.

12 Secondary Serialisation Strategy

Connected characters POV switch Same characters Standalone N/A

Figure 2: Secondary serialisation strategies in corpus of fifty NA novels

This use of multiple strategies is unlike anything that can be seen in romance proper. While connected series are common – take, for instance, the work of Lisa Kleypas, whose Wallflowers, Hathaways, and Ravenels series are all interconnected – this tends to be within either the paradigm of the same characters or hybrid serial (that is, effectively a connected characters strategy). While the number of linked works may be high, and the size of interconnected series sprawling, the serialisation strategies are relatively simple. This is not the case in new adult, where a new serial mode will often be turned to as the possibilities of one are exhausted. In some instances, the connections between texts are so complex because of the varying serialisation modes used that authors and/or readers must create guides to clarify their links and the orders in which they must be read. For instance, the Goodreads page for Abbi Glines’ Rosemary Beach series provides the following reading order:

1) Fallen Too Far (Rush & Blaire)

2) Never Too Far (Rush & Blaire)

3) Forever Too Far (Rush & Blaire)

4) Rush Too Far (Rush & Blaire)

5) Twisted Perfection (Woods & Della)

6) Simple Perfection (Woods & Della)

7) Take A Chance (Grant & Harlow)

13 8) One More Chance (Grant & Harlow)

9) You Were Mine (Tripp & Bethy)

9.5) Kiro's Emily (FREE )

10) When I’m Gone (Mase & Reese)

11) When You're Back (Mase & Reese)

12) The Best Goodbye (Captain & Rose)

13) Up In Flames (Nan)

13.5) Title TBA (Dean)” (“Rosemary Beach series”).

While this is a particularly complex example, this list is an excellent illustration of the ways in which serialisation practices are entangled in NA. The Rosemary Beach series actually encompasses several smaller series, including the Too Far series, the Perfection series, and the Chance series. As a whole, we might consider it a connected characters series, but if we drill down further to the smaller series level, we see series dominated by a same characters strategy – and, as in the instance of Rush Too Far, the fourth book in both the Rosemary Beach mega-series and the smaller Too Far series, we can see the use of the POV switch strategy as well.

We can also see the way in which NA often employs . In the Rosemary Beach example, these are standalone novellas and fit quite simply into the overall connected characters strategy. However, in other new adult series, these novellas can serve to complicate the overall serialisation strategy. In Jamie McGuire’s Beautiful duology, for instance, the dominant serialisation strategy is the POV switch. However, the series also includes novellas and short stories which illustrate further events in the central romance of Abby and Travis (such as their elopement, as told in novella A Beautiful Wedding). This adds a secondary same characters serialisation strategy, and offers, as Goris would put it, a window into the post-HEA space – in a way that it is usually not provided by the same characters strategy when used in full length novels.

There are two ways to read this usage of novellas, which are not mutually incompatible. The first is purely commercial: dedicated readers of a series, once they are invested, will buy a novella. There are two novellas included in my corpus of fifty books (Finding Cinderella by Colleen Hoover and Trust In Me by J. Lynn), and both use a POV

14 switch strategy, which perhaps indicates that this is a way of extending the life of a book which has sold well and garnering further profits. While, as I have noted, connected characters is the simplest way to extend a series indefinitely, we should not ignore the opportunities presented by the other two strategies, even if they are not always able to sustain full length novels: they offer the chance to either revisit the earlier narrative or a window into the post-HEA space.

The second is that it is indicative of another generic ancestor of the NA novel: fanfiction. In this form, writing which does not include the conflict that is essential to the romance novel – ie. a barrier between the characters, which they must overcome – is popular, in the form of “fluff” fiction, which generally features two characters in an established relationship having a sweet moment together: or, as Kathleen Smith puts it, “shameless flirting between characters and little to no plot” (n.p.). It is worth noting that NA emerged as a genre at approximately the same period as the “pull to publish” or P2P phenomenon, in which fanfiction – predominantly fanfiction based on Twilight – was removed from the internet, the names of characters changed, and republished as original fiction. (E.L. James’ Fifty Shades trilogy is infamously the most famous example of this practice.) One P2P novel – Alice Clayton’s Wallbanger – appears in the corpus of fifty books, which suggests some overlap, albeit small, between the two practices. While we should be careful about reading too much into the association between NA and fanfiction in terms of serialisation practices, especially since fanfiction is generally published chapter by chapter, while NA is almost always published as a single work, the links between the two in terms of style should be noted, especially in the instances where NA authors publish novellas or short stories, linked to their (usually traditionally) published series on free platforms like Wattpad, which also host fanfiction. (Jamie McGuire is one author who has done this in the past, although she no longer posts to the site due to concerns over piracy.)

Conclusion

Serialisation is intrinsic to NA as a form. Unlike its parent genre romance, a genre in which serialisation as a practice emerged gradually over time, serialisation has been a major part of NA since its explosion into literary consciousness in 2012-13. Initially, this impulse towards seriality – and, in particular, the adoption of messy and occasionally somewhat incompatible serialisation styles – can be read as a result of supply seeking to catch up with demand;

15 however, even as the genre has stabilised, serialisation has remained a common narrative practice. While standalone novels do exist, overwhelmingly, serialisation is de rigueur (as can be seen in my corpus of fifty, books were part of a series nine times out of ten).

This is symptomatic of the complex generic space that NA occupies, existing as a satellite genre of romance, heavily influenced by YA, with tangential influences from fanfiction. Analysing the complex serialisation strategies of new adult thus offers an excellent opportunity to trace its literary ancestry, and to understand its relationships to its parent genres: a model which could perhaps also be applied to better understand other emergent literary categories. Bound by the mandate of romance which dictates a happy ending, NA has not followed strictly in its parent genres’ footsteps, but has rather built on them to develop serialisation strategies of its own, which enabled it to capitalise on its emergent market success and to, as Hayward puts it, catch and keep an audience (3).

The dual impulses towards a happy ending and more narrative that NA addresses seem initially to be incompatible: how does one productively combine closure and continuation? The messiness and the complexity of some of the serialisation strategies of NA might be a result of this conundrum. The POV switch, for example, allows for a pleasurable revisiting of a narrative, complete with happy ending, but it is a technique which cannot be used more than once, given that romantic arcs are almost exclusively the province of two protagonists. The only way to continue the series – to address demand for more narrative, and, somewhat perversely, for more closure, for both singularity and seriality – is to adopt new strategies. NA is thus an excellent example of the pervasiveness of serialisation as a practice in the contemporary popular fiction industry, as strategies for serialisation have been adopted in instances where, in some cases, it seems like a text or a shorter series should stand alone. Thus, the study of NA has broader implications for the study of the fiction industry (especially the popular fiction industry) and the study of publishing (both traditional and independent) more broadly, as there is clearly a considerable demand for authors to produce not only works in the same genres as their previous works, but directly connected.

16 Works Cited “Shipping Bed Death.” TV Tropes, n.d., http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ShippingBedDeath, accessed 6 April 2017. “About the Romance Genre.” Romance Writers of America, n.d., https://www.rwa.org/romance, accessed 6 April 2017. “Beautiful Disaster.” JamieMcGuire.com, n.d., https://www.jamiemcguire.com/beautiful- disaster/, accessed 6 April 2017. “Rosemary Beach series.” Goodreads, n.d., https://www.goodreads.com/series/110498- rosemary-beach, accessed 6 April 2017. Abbott, H. Porter. The Cambridge Introduction to Narrative Theory. Cambridge University Press, 2008. Atria Books, “Atria Books Inks Deal With New York Times Bestselling Self-Published Author Colleen Hoover.” PR Newswire, 10 August 2012, http://www.prnewswire.com/news- releases/atria-books-inks-deal-with-new-york-times-bestselling-self-published-author- colleen-hoover-165744026.html, accessed 6 April 2017. Brockmann, Suzanne. Gone Too Far. Ballantine, 2003. Carmack, Cora. Losing It. HarperCollins, 2012. Clayton, Alice. Wallbanger. Gallery Books, 2013. Crownover, Jay. Jet. William Morrow, 2013. Dahl, Victoria. Bad Boys Do. Harlequin, 2011. Dahl, Victoria. Good Girls Don’t. Harlequin, 2011. Dahl, Victoria. Real Men Will. Harlequin, 2011. Deahl, Rachel. “Atria Inks Self-Pub’d Bestseller McGuire to Two-Book Deal.” Publishers Weekly, 11 July 2012, http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry- news/industry-deals/article/52953-atria-inks-self-pub-d-bestseller-mcguire-to-two-book- deal.html, accessed 6 April 2017. Echols, Jennifer. Biggest Flirts. Simon Pulse, 2014. Ficke, Sarah. “Brewing up a Romance.” Popular Culture Association conference, 13-15 April 2017, Marquis and Marina Marriott, San Diego, CA. Conference paper. Glines, Abbi. Fallen Too Far. Atria Books, 2014. Glines, Abbi. Forever Too Far. Atria Books, 2014. Glines, Abbi. Never Too Far. Atria Books, 2014. Glines, Abbi. Rush Too Far. Atria Books, 2014.

17 Goris, An. “Happily Ever After… and After: Serialisation and the Popular Romance Novel.” Americana: The Journal of American Popular Culture, vol. 12, no. 1, 2013, n.pag. Accessed 6 April 2017. Hayward, Jennifer. Consuming Pleasures: Active and Serial from Dickens to Soap Opera. University Press of Kentucky, 1997. Hoover, Colleen. Finding Cinderella. Atria, 2013. Hoover, Colleen. Point of Retreat. Atria, 2012. Hoover, Colleen. Slammed. Atria, 2012. Hoover, Colleen. This Girl. Atria, 2013. Husband, Janet & Jonathan F. Husband, Sequels: An Annotated Guide to Novels in Series, 4th edition, American Library Association, 2009. Jae-Jones, S. “New Adult & Shelving.” Uncreated Conscience, 13 November 2009b, http://sjaejones.com/blog/2009/new-adult-shelving/, accessed 6 April 2017. Jae-Jones, S. “St. Martin’s New Adult Contest.” Uncreated Conscience, 9 November 2009a, http://sjaejones.com/blog/2009/st-martins-new-adult-contest/, accessed 6 April 2017. James, E.L. Fifty Shades Darker. Vintage, 2012. James, E.L. Fifty Shades Freed. Vintage, 2012. James, E.L. Fifty Shades of Grey. Vintage, 2012. Kennedy, Elle. The Deal. Self-published, 2015. Kennedy, Elle. The Mistake. Self-published, 2015. Kennedy, Elle. The Score. Self-published, 2016. Lamb, Joyce. “Interview: Cora Carmack, author of Losing It.” USA Today, 4 December 2012, http://happyeverafter.usatoday.com/2012/12/04/cora-carmack-interview-losing-it-new-adult/, accessed 6 April 2017. Lynn, J. Trust in Me. William Morrow, 2013. Maas, Sarah J. A Court of Mist and Fury. Bloomsbury, 2016. Maas, Sarah J. A Court of Thorns and Roses. Bloomsbury, 2015. McAlister, Jodi. “Breaking the Hard Limits: Romance, Pornography, and the Question of Genre in the Fifty Shades Trilogy.” Analyses/Rereadings/Theories, vol. 5, 2015, pp. 23-33. McAlister, Jodi. “Not Quite YA, Not Yet Adult: The Short but Complex History of ‘New Adult’ Fiction.” Australian Literary Studies, forthcoming. McAlister, Jodi. “Travelling Through Time and Genre: Are the Outlander Books Romance Novels?” Adoring Outlander: Essays on Fandom, Genre and the Female Audience, edited by Valerie Frankel, McFarland, 2016, pp. 94-105. McGuire, Jamie. A Beautiful Wedding. Atria, 2013.

18 McGuire, Jamie. Beautiful Disaster. Atria, 2012. McGuire, Jamie. Walking Disaster. Atria, 2013. Meyer, Stephenie. Breaking Dawn. Little, Brown, 2008. Meyer, Stephenie. Life and Death. Little, Brown, 2015. Meyer, Stephenie. Midnight Sun. Unpublished. Meyer, Stephenie. Twilight. Little, Brown, 2005. Moyes, Jojo. Me Before You. Penguin, 2012. Pearce, Lynne. “Romance and Repetition: Testing the Limits of Love.” Journal of Popular Romance Studies, vol. 2, no. 1, 2011, n.pag. Accessed 6 April 2017. Regis, Pamela. A Natural History of the Romance Novel. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003. Rowell, Rainbow. Fangirl. St Martin’s Press, 2013. Smith, Kathleen. The Fangirl Life: A Guide to All the Feels and Learning How to Deal. Penguin, 2016. Sorenson, Jessica. The Coincidence of Callie and Kayden. Hachette, 2013. Webber, Tammara. Breakable. Penguin, 2014. Webber, Tammara. Easy. Penguin, 2012. Webber, Tammara. Sweet. Self-published, 2015. Williams, J.P. “The Mystique of Moonlighting: When You Care Enough to Watch the Very Best.” Journal of Popular Film and Television, Vol. 6, No.3, 1988, pp. 90-100.

19 Appendix A

Title Author Year Series Number Primary Secondary Characteristic Characteristic

A Court of Mist and Fury Sarah J. Maas 2016 A Court of Thorns and Roses 2 Same characters

A Court of Thorns and Sarah J. Maas 2015 A Court of Thorns and Roses 1 Same characters Roses Addicted to You Krista Ritchie 2013 Addicted 1 Same characters Connected characters

Archer’s Voice Mia Sheridan 2014 N/A N/A Standalone Be with Me J. Lynn 2014 Wait For You 2 Connected characters POV switch Beautiful Disaster Jamie McGuire 2011 Beautiful 1 POV switch Same characters Breakable Tammara Webber 2014 Contours of the Heart 2 POV switch Connected characters Bully Penelope Douglas 2013 Fall Away 1 Connected characters Same characters

Charade Nyrae Dawn 2012 Games 1 Connected characters

Confess Colleen Hoover 2017 N/A N/A Standalone Easy Tammara Webber 2012 Contours of the Heart 1 POV switch Connected characters

Faking It Cora Carmack 2013 Losing It 2 Connected characters

Fangirl Rainbow Rowell 2013 N/A N/A Standalone Finding Cinderella Colleen Hoover 2013 Hopeless 2.5 POV switch Connected characters Flat-Out Love Jessica Park 2011 Flat-Out Love 1 Connected characters POV switch

Foreplay Sophie Jordan 2013 The Ivy Chronicles 1 Connected characters Forever Too Far Abbi Glines 2013 Rosemary Beach; Too Far 3; 3 Same characters Connected characters

Frigid J. Lynn 2013 Frigid 1 Connected characters Hopeless Colleen Hoover 2012 Hopeless 1 POV switch Connected characters

It Ends With Us Colleen Hoover 2016 N/A N/A Standalone

Jet Jay Crownover 2013 Marked Men 2 Connected characters

Lick Kylie Scott 2013 Stage Dive 1 Connected characters Losing Hope Colleen Hoover 2013 Hopeless 2 POV switch Connected characters

Maybe Someday Colleen Hoover 2014 Maybe 1 Connected characters More Than This Jay McLean 2013 More Than 1 Connected characters Same characters

20 Appendix A

My Favourite Mistake Chelsea M. 2012 My Favourite Mistake 1 Connected characters Same characters Cameron Never Too Far Abbi Glines 2013 Rosemary Beach; Too Far 2; 2 Same characters Connected characters

November Nine Colleen Hoover 2015 N/A N/A Standalone

On Dublin Street Samantha Young 2012 On Dublin Street 1 Connected characters One Tiny Lie K.A. Tucker 2014 Ten Tiny Breaths 2 Connected characters Same characters Paper Princess Erin Watt 2016 The Royals 1 Same characters Connected characters

Point of Retreat Colleen Hoover 2012 Slammed 2 Same characters

Price of a Kiss Linda Kage 2013 Forbidden Men 1 Connected characters Stay With Me J. Lynn 2014 Wait For You 3 Connected characters POV switch Ten Tiny Breaths K.A. Tucker 2012 Ten Tiny Breaths 1 Connected characters Same characters The Coincidence of Callie Jessica Sorensen 2012 The Coincidence 1 Same characters Connected characters and Kayden The Deal Elle Kennedy 2015 Off-Campus 1 Connected characters The Edge of Never J.A. Redmerski 2012 The Edge of Never 1 Same characters Connected characters

The Hook Up Kristen Callihan 2014 Game On 1 Connected characters

The Mistake Elle Kennedy 2015 Off-Campus 2 Connected characters

The Score Elle Kennedy 2016 Off-Campus 3 Connected characters The Secret of Ella and Jessica Sorensen 2012 The Secret 1 Same characters Connected characters Micha The Year We Fell Down Sarina Bowen 2014 The Ivy Years 1 Connected characters This Girl Colleen Hoover 2013 Slammed 3 Same characters POV switch Thoughtless S.C. Stephens 2009 Thoughtless 1 Same characters Connected characters Trust In Me J. Lynn 2013 Wait for You 1.5 POV switch Connected characters Twisted Perfection Abbi Glines 2013 Rosemary Beach; Perfection 5; 1 Same characters Connected characters Wait For You J. Lynn 2013 Wait for You 1 Connected characters POV switch Walking Disaster Jamie McGuire 2013 Beautiful 2 POV switch Same characters Wallbanger Alice Clayton 2012 Cocktail 1 Same characters Connected characters

21