One of the biggest issues with writing a series is tracking all the data: characters, locations, space-ships, the endless stuff that you must remember. As of today, the Earth Saga is looking at 318 scenes, 96 characters of interest, and 43 planets mentioned or visited. It’s a lot to keep track of.
(These notebooks help with keeping things straight. Notes for each novel go into a separate book, whenever the need presents itself.)
(This lovely chart tracks the story. It started way back in book I, and even has a few entries for books VI, VII, VIII, and IX. The primary information on this list include what chapter I’m working on, what is going on in the scene, and then location, and finally the date.)
(Tracking characters is very important when doing a series. Who is still alive, and who might have disappeared but will reappear in another book? Black means they’re out of the picture in that book, while green means they’ll make an appearance. The far-right information lists the species and any critical particulars about the character. The information on the left is colour-coded for humans, friendly aliens, enemy aliens, and those we won’t be seeing again.)
(Various planets are visited throughout the Earth Saga. Green are friendly, red hostile, and grey unoccupied. Distance from Earth is among the data tracked for this page.)
This is just one of the necessary evils of writing a series. It is getting slightly more difficult and frustrating to track people, places and things as the series continues, but I think that the more depth in characters and locations, the better the story.