Starting Somewhere Other Than the Beginning

Congratulations to Kat and Kristin, who won e-copies of Disintegration! Enjoy!

I forget if I just coyly hinted at it or outright stated it, but either way: I am writing a sequel to Searching the Skies. (And I do have plans for a third book in that series, but let's not get ahead of ourselves here!) I've never written a sequel to anything before. In the past, I always figured I told the stories I wanted to tell and ended them when I was done. Looking back, however, the ending of StS does lend itself nicely to a continuing story with the same characters. Maybe my subconscious is smarter than I am.

It's been an interesting experience starting somewhere other than the very beginning. There are some ups and downs to working within an established framework. On one hand, the romance is already in place and these characters are already in a relationship. While there will be conflict in the book, of course, getting to the romance is not it. On the other hand, I don't want to rely too heavily on the previous book for marketing purposes. Ideally, I want the book to be able to stand on its own and not have readers feel like they're missing a big chunk of the story if they happened to start with #2, rather than #1.

I'm about a third of the way through, and I think I'm satisfied with it so far. (Gosh, that was a ringing endorsement, wasn't it?) As I mentioned in a New Year's-themed post, I do want to expand my writing horizons, and this book fulfills a number of things I want to try. Fingers crossed that the results will be everything I want them to be!