The Writing Process of a Sequel

Greetings!

The past few weeks have been surreal, reveling in the world's reaction to "The Ducal Detective".  It's been surprising how many different types of people are engaging in Jax's adventure and actually enjoying it.  Debuting at #31 on the Amazon Bestselling Mystery Shorts list, I officially get to claim I am an (Amazon) best-selling author. Which, as I think about it more and more, is beyond anything I could have realistically imagine.

And yet, the most stressful question I've been asked after my readers have finished is, "When is Book 2 coming out?"  My answer, as of June 9th was, "Well, I haven't even started it yet..." and it was met with a cool reception.  Luckily for me, I was struck with a brilliant idea for a crime a few days later while out for a walk, and I dove back into the realm of duchies.  

I will say that writing a sequel has never been a favorite thing of mine because I feel so confined by what I have already written.  When penning the first novella, I had free reign of this entire world in my head, creating a new way of life.  Now, I have to adhere to those restrictions. Family histories are locked in place and locations are set in stone.  It makes it substantially harder to feel that freedom that came with the first book.  After all, "The Ducal Detective" was born out of the need to escape the boundaries of another creation of mine.

Yet, the glorious thing about a novella is that they are short, meaning I did not fill book one up with rambling descriptions of how the world works and the relationships between all the people in that world.  This has allowed me to branch off in a completely different direction, able to leave behind one duchy and create a new one for the reader to become acquainted with.  A method, as a writer, that I find will come in handy as I continue to grow the series.  Develop your characters, but put them in a new place that you can design as you go along.  Of course, I still have some moments where I flip back to book one and figure out, "now, what did I say here," but they are few and far between.  The style of narrative that I am pursuing with this series is learned from my mistakes of digging too deeply and creating a tangled web that's frustrating to weave your way through.  As a result, writing doesn't feel as laborious as it once was, and I am happily zipping through book two with the hopes of publishing it by the end of July!

Stay tuned!

Arms around,

S.B.