Are you ready for the best intro to an Ask An Author article? I certainly am! Honestly, it could be a great title to the series we're featuring this month. 

"Ask An Author, Charlie Boone!" 

That's right! We got a set of questions for @Geron Kees's wonderful series, Charlie Boone. Even if you haven't read any of the stories, you've probably seen the titles in the Story Archives. With twenty completed stories, I'm sure it was difficult for our anonymous reader to only ask four questions. Let's get right to it!

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Charlie Boone
Geron Kees

20 Stories / 760,120 Words / Rating: Mature

When you started the series back in 2016, did you expect to still be writing the series 6 years later?

I never had an inkling that there would ever be more than one Charlie Boone tale. The first one was just a stab at a Halloween tale, and the title was an obvious parody of another writer's title. That first tale had no supernatural, fantasy, or science fiction elements to it. The response was better than I expected, and several readers mentioned the possibility of a story for Christmas. So I decided to do another. That first Christmas tale was the one where Max was introduced, and the fantasy element entered the story line. The treatment of the title was repeated, sort of, and has become the standard for the series.

Do you find it easy to come up with new adventures, for whichever holiday?

I actually don't have trouble thinking up plots for new stories. I'm a lifelong reader, and that sort of develops a melting pot of ideas inside. I never plot out any of these tales first. I start with the germ of an idea for a new story centered on the holiday, and then just go from there. The stories tend to write themselves as I go along. I know some writers create outlines and plot their stories in great detail before they ever sit to write. I tend to wing it, research things as I move along, and wake up in the mornings with new ideas. Seems to work, more or less!

Did you envisage Charlie and Kip having such a large group of friends, and is it easy to keep track of them all?

Um....no. I never imagined Charlie and his immediate friends getting to know so many others. But new characters popped up as the series progressed, and many somehow managed to find fans that wanted to see more of them. The character list is so large now that I can't include everyone in each story without pulling my hair out. So I try to rotate among them from one story to the next so everyone gets a turn to adventure a little with the guys. And yes, I do have trouble keeping track of each character's specifics now, as all of them have developed and changed over time. I have to keep notes, definitely. Remembering to update them is the hard part!

Do you have more adventures planned for Charlie Boone and friends?

After spending so much time with Charlie and the gang, they've become friends of mine, too. I really have no desire to let them go, though I have had to make concessions to time. With the holiday theme of each tale, I pretty much have to drop whatever I'm doing as a holiday approaches in order to write a new CB tale. This has seriously interfered with efforts to write other stories, and I had to drop the Valentine's Day-themed Charlie Boone tale as a result. I plan to keep with the series as long as readers read them. But the holiday themes may have to become less a part of the story, so that I can write these in between other tales. But I'll have to see how it goes!

I also have plans to add some stories to the series that revolve around some of Charlie's friends, but may not include the regular group of main characters. All the characters in the series have lives that go on when they are not with Charlie, Kip, and the others, and it seems like a fun idea to maybe write a few tales about them as they move through their own days. Stay tuned!

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And there you have it. I hope these questions and answers encourages y'all to go reading. If you like Ask An Author and the insight the authors provide, send me three or so questions for your favorite story. I'll go knock on the author's door with my little notepad and jot down their responses. 

Don't think I forgot how much fun everyone had when I gave the asking power to the comment section. Let's have some fun. For the fans of the Charlie Boone series, if y'all have any questions of your own, drop 'em in the comments. Just don't go hog-wild; one question per person. We don't want to overload @Geron Kees, do we? 

Until next month.