Chicks-n-Scratching

Hi, my name is Kate and I’m a sequel whore.

(Hello, Kate)

I started my obesession with writing sequels when I first took hands to keyboard and began my writing journey. See, I cut my teeth on epic fantasy and anyone with a mind toward sword and sorcery knows that there is no such animal as a stand alone fantasy novel. It just doesn’t happen. It’s like Bigfoot or the Loch Ness Monster. You may have heard about it once upon a time, but you’ve never seen it and no one has ever offered convincing proof of its existence.

However, I’m also not the typical sequel writer either. I don’t feel compelled to write the next curve in the story arc on the heels of the preceeding volume. I just don’t work that way. If I’ve spent my time struggling with a 60-80K novel, I want a break from those characters, their friends, their worlds and their problems. I need a palate cleanser to make it all fresh when I decide to go back and write the next part of the saga. This is probably not a very good practice for someone who has as many titles out as I do. You’d think I’d have learned to just deal with it and write the sequel immediately after finishing the book that comes before. It’s a sad confession to make, but it’s true…I have some books that came out in ’07 that are still awaiting their planned sequels. Yes, I know public interest wanes and books are forgotten in the sea of newer titles that are released every month.

But you see, I have a game plan.

With the release of a sequel a year…or a few….later, it makes people want to go back to the other books and either reread them if they’ve purchased a copy when it first came out, or drives new readers to the backlist. (And before you think I’m a marketing strategist, I have to tell you I never considered that when I shuffled my sequels to the end of the line.)

It isn’t just my love of writing sequels or series that drives me, it’s my love of reading them. I’ve gotten to the point where I’ll read what might be a stand-alone novel and pick out the secondary characters who I think should have their own books. I get very frustrated when they aren’t the next ones written. For instance, one of my fav authors had started a series with three best friends, she wrote two of the books and in the last installment gave broad hints that the next book in the series would be of the final friend who had not met and fallen in love with her hero. I’ve waited and waited, and signed up for her newsletter, stalked her website and waited for word that the final book would be released soon. Finally, her next book went up on her site and it…isn’t the heroine it should have been. Not only did she skip the final friend, she’s not even in that same extended series at all. She started a completely new one! Oh, the frustration. *shakes fists to heaven*

I think I just got some of my own back there. A great cosmic joke and wake up call for me. Don’t keep the fans waiting.

So, how do you do it? If you’re a writer, do you write your sequels in order or do you put something else between as buffer?

-Kat

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