I hadn’t thought of it that way, but yes, clusters of fictional characters can be a selling point for me. Explaining exactly why one book satisfies and another does not is a bit like sorting out all the ingredients in a stew, but I suspect it’s one reason–and possibly a major one–why I keep bringing home the JD Robb “Eve Dallas” stories. The same for Terry Pratchett’s Discworld, and several others. In present company, it was a selling point with Pay McKenna and friends, but not, in my case, of the Cavanaugh Street group. Father Tibor holds my interest and has my respect, but he’s not a group.

There seems to be some genetic predisposition in favor of “cute,” which is probably one of the things keeping two year olds, kittens and puppies alive. There may be a natural bent toward empathy so broad it includes people we know perfectly well don’t exist–but we worry about them anyway. (I’ve lost a few relatives whose deaths didn’t hit me as hard as the death of Catherine Chandler in BEAUTY AND THE BEST. That may be wrong of me, but it is nonetheless so.)

But supporting characters may be a worthwhile part of the stew without the Soap Opera Effect. One of the main attractions of the old Travis McGee stories–for me, anyway–was G. Ludwig Meyer, Certified Guarantor, and the times when something happened to him were some of his least interesting appearances. I would pay good money to be able to sit somewhere adn listen to Dr. Meyer and Fr Tibor discuss–anything: anything at all. I don’t think McGee and Demarkian would be as interesting and informative. I’m not concerned for Meyer or Father Tibor” I’m just glad to spend some time with them.

And it’s worth considering place as distinct from people. Yes, of course they overlap, but certain real places have been used as fictional settings so often that some of the magic of storytelling has transferred to the real place. The post-Civil War American West, Regency and late Victorian London and contemporary New York City are part of the cast, with the writer able to benefit from the depth that repeated trips impart. But not all the best places are real. Lankhmar, Todos Santos and Jekkara are as much home to me as several places I’ve worked and paid taxes. If I return to them for an evening, that may be “escape” but it is no more shutting down my mind than would a trip to New York to visit the Strand again.

If all your favorite haunts can be found on maps, you haven’t traveled far enough.

And it worked. *I* worked, altering attitudes, recognizing what benefit I was deriving from being miserable, and either getting that benefit from a different source, or realizing the benefit was unworthy and learning to do without. I got happy, because after all, my life is pretty darn good.

Therapy can be for different purposes during different phases of life. During my divorce, it was for emotional support. I was depressed for a reason. After my second marriage it was to increase communication, so that the marriage succeeded. Then there were personal issues I felt I needed work to alter, so as to remove self-imposed barriers to enjoyment of life.

I was very lucky to find a therapist who fit into my view of therapy and had similar goals.

Now, on to series characters. Honestly, Jane, in a few of your books I’ve felt that they would have been better (or at least more adventurous) without the crew on Cavanaugh street. “Somebody Else’s Music” is a case in point. Gregor doesn’t even enter the book until late in the story and I was utterly captivated by the interweaving story up until that point. The characters were wonderful, fresh and vital. I couldn’t quite predict where things were going. Then Gregor arrives, and suddenly we’ve got familiar behaviors and a familiar resolution in sight. Hmmm. It was almost like a screaming U-turn in the feeling of the book. I wondered to myself at the time, “she was doing so terrifically up to then, why not make this a stand-alone?” The quality of writing didn’t change, it was still excellent, but the *feeling* of the book altered for me.

It’s interesting you say that Demarkian books do better than non-Demarkian ones. Many people enjoy that feeling of comfort in reading about familiar characters. It’s easier to empathize with characters you know more about, and when you’ve got a dozen books to garner small facts about any minor character, you get a lot more familiarity than can be developed in a single book.

I imagine there must be a corresponding author’s level of comfort…you don’t have to write *every* little thing to reveal character, because it’s been written before. Even if it’s not referred to in the current book, faithful readers will know this character is tramatized by clowns or afraid of horses. If a reader is reading out of sequence, well, you can include the important stuff but leave out the irrelevant. But the richness and depth of character is there.

And seeing a familiar character appear as you describe in the Trollope novels is like seeing a friend appear at your door. You know something, good or bad, is going to happen around this person, and that sense of anticipation is a delicious feeling to have while reading. Pleasure, excitement, or for some characters, suspense. Anytime you can get that kind of feeling going in a book it’s a good thing for the readers. I think it’s harder for stand-alone books to engender that feeling, certainly it can’t be done with the mere appearance of a character.

That’s my take on it, anyway.

It doesn’t surprise me that people like interesting characters and their relationships. We’re a social species living in a fairly fragmented world. Oh, in spite of social fragmentation, we do all *have* various real social circles – family, work, friends, fellow-hobbyists or volunteers etc. But we’ve got a natural tendency to be interested in people and relationships, and can always add on a fictional network which has as a bonus the inability to make personal demands and the ability to be dropped the minute it becomes boring (or real life starts making demands).

Or maybe this is a female characteristic. I’m always hearing that women focus on people and men on things.