February 23, 2012

Anatomy of an eBook (2): Untitled Sequel to Save The Best For Last/The Heat of Heat

Now that my vacation is over and I am still awaiting edits for Isn't She Lovely?, my writer's thoughts turn to my work in progress (because there's no time to waste!).

The work in progress is a sequel to my earlier books Save The Best For Last and The Heat of Heat, as mentioned in my earlier post. I was musing over how to structure the story because of the difficult timing, as part of the action occurs between these two books and another part occurs after the second book.

I've decided to keep it all as one book, one labeled Book One and another labeled Book Two. I want the story to be as complete as possible, so it doesn't make sense to split this up. I'll put some kind of notation under the subtitle of each "book" to clarify the timeframe.

With that settled, a little about the plotline. Liv and Brian's relationship is too messy to be resolved neatly, but there needs to be a complete development of a romantic relationship with at least the hint of a happily-ever-after ending, or else readers are going to be ticked off Big Time. With Gen from Save The Best For Last married, and sisters Chantal and Sinclair from The Heat of Heat happily in love, that leaves Cesca from Save The Best For Last. All readers really know about Cesca is that her father is quite wealthy and that she dislikes police officers, so it's a given who she'll find herself attracted to for maximum conflict. The police officer in question has actually already been introduced. For those of you who have read Save The Best For Last, you might recall the handsome young officer who assisted Gen when a mugger knocked her over and transported her to the emergency room for treatment and became suspicious when she didn't seem to know her husband's phone number. This is not a coincidence; the only reason he was introduced was as a love interest for Cesca in a future story. The objective was to do it subtly, so that it's not, like, in the reader's face...and so that if the book bombed and I changed my mind about doing a follow-up it can be forgotten about. As it turns out, these books were both pretty popular, so as far as that future story is concerned, the future is now! 

Next time I hope to have a catchy first sentence to share with you.