The Sequel to my best seller! How I had to create one.

Diane Scott Lewis was born in California, wrote her first novel at five (with her mother's help), and published short-stories and poems in school magazines. She had a short-story submitted by my High School to a literary festival when she was seventeen. She joined the navy at nineteen. Married her navy husband in Greece, had two sons. She now lives in Western Pennsylvania.
  
She had her first novel published in 2010. That novel is now the reworked Escape the Revolution.
But today we discuss the sequel, Hostage to the Revolution, due out July 19th.

What do you do when a book grows too big?                        

When I started writing, I had no idea there were word count restrictions. I'd read huge, lumbering books numerous times. But the fiction world had changed, especially for a new author.

The answer to this problem is you cut the story in half, or in this case, the last third, which was the perfect place to break the flow. When I wrote this first novel, originally titled The False Light, renamed Betrayed Countess, and now Escape the Revolution, it grew to nearly 700 pages. I suppose I didn’t want the adventure to end, but the novel was unwieldy, and out of control.

I had to shave off the last third, plump up that part of the story, and create a sequel: Hostage to the Revolution.

Below is the blurb to explain the first book ESCAPE THE REVOLUTION:

Forced from France on the eve of the French Revolution, Countess Bettina Jonquiere must deliver an important package to further the royalist cause. In England, she discovers the package is full of blank papers, the address false and she’s penniless. Bettina toils in a bawdy tavern and falls in love with a man who may have murdered his wife. Tracked by ruthless revolutionaries, she must uncover the truth about her father’s murder—and her lover’s guilt—while her life is threatened.

The Historical Novel Society called it: "Simply brilliant."

For the reviewers who lamented that this novel has no Happily Ever After, that’s because you need to read the sequel for the true ending. For those who haven’t read the first book, I hope you’ll download both novels.

Here’s the blurb for HOSTAGE TO THE REVOLUTION:

Sequel to Escape the Revolution. In 1796, ruined countess Bettina Jonquiere leaves England after the reported drowning of her lover, Everett.  In New Orleans she struggles to establish a new life for her children. Soon a ruthless Frenchman demands the money stolen by her father at the start of the French Revolution. Bettina is forced on a dangerous mission to France to recover the funds. She unravels dark family secrets, but will she find the man she lost as well?

This last book on Bettina’s story will be available July 19^th.

I hope fans will enjoy both of these novels. I think readers will be satisfied with this surprise ending.

For more on my books, please visit my BWL Author page

Or my website: dianescottlewis.org