Katriena Knights The Challenges of Sequel-izing

Writing a sequel ought to be easy, right? After all, it’s the same characters, the same world, often a continuation of the same story. So you don’t have to spend a lot of time doing that pesky worldbuilding or preliminary character workups. You know these characters; you know this world. You’ve developed a relationship. All you have to do is jump right in and start writing.

Right?

Well, maybe.

The problem comes when you have to consider the story, its need to progress from the previous story, and the need to keep readers entertained by not repeating yourself. (And keeping myself entertained, too, which can be a job of work…)

In the case of SUMMONING SEBASTIAN, it was really more of a continuation of Necromancing Nim . Still, there were a good many challenges as far as the story structure, keeping things fresh, and not repeating myself.

Then there were the characters.

I knew these characters already, right? Well, yes. But they changed in the interim. It was like they underwent character development while I wasn’t actively writing about them. It works, I think, because there’s a bit of a time lag between the two books, and since Colin and Nim have been through a great deal, they’ve had the time to assimilate all that, and by the time we get to SUMMONING SEBASTIAN, they’re slightly different people because of it.

I didn’t want things to be too easy, either. I left my poor tortured characters in a hell of a mess, and I didn’t want them to be able to get out of it in a couple of chapters. And not only was it not too easy (I don’t think…), it took me about four drafts of the last few chapters to get the whole wrap-up to work to my satisfaction…whatever that means. I pulled out a lot of hair, that’s for sure.

Now I’m poking at ideas for a third book, trying to find yet another way to tell another story about these characters without repeating myself or getting boring. I still haven’t quite gotten a plot to fall out, but hopefully one will, because I don’t think I’m quite done with these characters yet. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy SUMMONING SEBASTIAN.

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About Katriena Knights

Katriena Knights wrote her first poem, "Ode to a Pancake," at the age of three, and has since become the award-winning author of several paranormal romances, including The Haunting of Rory Campbell, a December, 2001 release from ImaJinn Books. Other books include Time and Time Again, also available from ImaJinn, The Vampire Apocalypse novella series, which will be appearing in paperback from ImaJinn in April of next year, and Dealing With David, a best- selling short contemporary published by Hard Shell Word Factory.

Katriena grew up in a podunkish town in the middle of a cornfield in East Central Illinois, and now lives in a podunkish town in the middle of the Colorado mountains with her husband, two children, four Siberian huskies and several very stupid aquarium fish. In her "spare" time she likes to read, watch TV, catch up on movies and play sword- and- sorcery computer games. She's a die-hard X-Files fan and knows more about Pokémon than anyone over the age of ten should ever know.

Katriena loves to hear from her readers and can be contacted through her web page.

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About SUMMONING SEBASTIAN

Caught between a stone and a hard place…

Nim and Colin can’t bring themselves to be happy they saved the world from the vampire- zombie apocalypse. Not with the death of Sebastian, the third in their trio, weighing heavily on their hearts.

As they turn to each other in their grief, they make an amazing discovery. They can still communicate with their beloved—but only while deep in the throes of passion. Yet they want more. They want Sebastian back in their arms for real.

Their mission to return Sebastian to corporeal form becomes urgent when they realize he is being used as a pawn in a game of vampiric proportions. The trail leads to an even more explosive mystery in the wilds of Siberia, where their quest becomes a race against time.

If they can’t put all the pieces together before other vampires succeed in using what’s left of Sebastian for an evil plan, all trace of their lover could disappear. Forever.

Warning: Contains two lovers who draw up a skin-tingling plan to bring their third back from the dead, the truth behind an ancient mystery (hey, it could have happened that way!), and hot sexytimes in a frozen wilderness.