Jumping the Shark

I don't watch a lot of television series. I used to not watch a lot of television, period, but I've gotten addicted to MSNBC's "Doc Block" and I love Court TV. (Hey, I write romantic suspense -- it's research!). I like A Haunting on Discovery. I like Mythbusters.

I like non-fiction stuff.

Series?

Not so much.

At one time I was an X-Files addict. I lived for the original Law & Order series. But when people start talking about House and Lost and a host of other shows . . . well, I'm clueless.

This is fairly ironic to me, since I write books that are a series of loosely-connected stories (a la Rachel Lee's Conard County series from a few years back). Even in my head, I tend to 'watch' my books as a series of movies -- I know what happens after a book, off scene during a book, etc.

I've known for a long time what the "series finale" would be. That particular novel idea scares me, not only because of the story line, but because it signals for me the end of something that seems almost as real to me as my daily life. The other thing that makes me nervous? What if it isn't "The End"? What if I find something after that finale?

And what if my series "jumps the shark" before I get to the finale?

(And could I use any more quotation marks in this post?!)

It's not like there aren't enough questions to worry about in the writing business. So what does my neurotic self go and do?

Find something else to fixate on!

Do you read series? If so, which ones? And what happens when an author's particular world jumps the shark?