One of the comments I occasionally hear is, “There are so many characters!”
I understand why readers might feel that way at first. The Mirror Estate series has a large cast. But in my mind, it’s not much different from television shows like NCIS, Law & Order, or the One Chicago series.
Each of those shows has a core cast. Then, over the seasons, you meet spouses, children, parents, siblings, friends, supervisors, witnesses, suspects, and recurring characters. Add them all together, and the cast becomes enormous.
Mirror Estate works much the same way.
There is a core group of characters at the heart of the series. Each novel simply shines the spotlight on a few of them. While Dylan may take center stage in one story, another book might focus on Jamie Beth, Charlie, Olivia, or one of the investigators. The rest of the cast is still there, living their lives, even when they aren’t in the foreground.
Keeping all those relationships straight isn’t difficult for me. I come from a big family, so remembering who’s related to whom has always felt natural. As the series grew, I created family trees and character notes—not because I couldn’t remember them, but to make sure every detail stayed consistent from one book to the next.
The setting evolved in much the same way.
When I first imagined Mirror Estate, it was simply a grand estate inspired by places like the Biltmore Estate. Then came the underground tunnels. Later, memories from visiting my Catholic school inspired the convent and chapel. One idea naturally led to another until I realized the fictional world had grown large enough that I needed a map.
That’s one of my favorite parts of writing a series.
A fictional world doesn’t appear all at once. It grows one story, one character, and one unexpected idea at a time. Before long, it begins to feel like a real place—not just to readers, but to the author as well.
Sometimes, I’m just as excited to discover what lies around the next corner as my readers are.