TO SEQUEL OR NOT TO SEQUEL--THAT IS THE QUESTION by Karla Stover

 Whether or not to write a sequel isn't an easy decision. Consider Dean Koontz who said, "Too many sequels diminish the original." or John Updike's pithy remark, "I suppose sequels are inevitable for writers of a certain."

 

Ouch!

 

One danger of writing a series is, how well you like your characters. Many writers grew to hate the people (or animals) they created. A. A. Milne was one. Milne wrote 3 novels, four plays and 18 screenplays but Winnie the Pooh outshined them all. "I suppose that every one of us hopes secretly for immortality; to leave, I mean, a name behind him which will live forever in this world, whatever he may be doing, himself, in the next," Milne said, but he grew to hate the "eclipsing fame of his beloved children's books."

 

It's pretty well-known tat Sir Author Conan Doyle had a love-hate relationship with Sherlock Holmes. Doyle tried to kill off Holmes in 1893 and  resisted readers' outrage for 8 years before bringing him back. Here, in Tacoma, where I live, Doyle spoke at the Scottish Hall but refused to discuss Holmes. According to  The Guinness Book of World Records, more than 70 actors have portrayed Holmes, making him the most portrayed movie character. Doyle undoubtedly would have recoiled in horror.

 

I was never a Hercule Poirot fan and, after a while, neither was Agatha Christie. She called him a douche, saying, "As much as I love the Poirot stories, one cannot deny the fact that he loved himself even more. He knew that he was always the smartest person in the room and acted accordingly." Christie killed him off and it seems no one protested much.

 

Most Little Women readers probably know that the author, Louisa May Alcott, based the character, Jo, on herself. They may not know that her own three sisters were the prototypes for Meg, Amy, and Beth. Readers may also not know that Alcott didn't want to write the book. She wanted to write literature and pulp fiction. When the editor at Roberts Brothers Publishing Company, Thomas Niles, tried to interest her in writing a book for girls, she said she wasn't interested in writing "moral pap for the young." Only after Niles offered a contract to her father did Alcott give in--writing Little Women in 10 weeks. According to http://intestinalbookworms.blogspot.com by at the end of three-book series, "Alcott literally wanted to blow up the boy's school in which her main character lived and worked."

 

And consider this: Bella Swan and Edward Cullen of The Twilight series regularly feature on lists of fiction's most disliked characters. Not that it hurt sales, but still . . . Also on the lists are Holden Caulfield, Scarlett O'Hara and Rhett Butler, Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff, Hamlet, and Beth March.

 

Hmmm, perhaps it's best to remember what Kingsley Amis said, "If you can't annoy somebody, there's little point in writing."

 

 



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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