It's here!

So, The Thing About Sequels

The first person to ask me about writing a sequel to Andrea Vernon and the Corporation for UltraHuman Protection was my editor, Betsy Mitchell. My wife and I had brought our tiny son out to lunch with her to thank her for all she had done to help the book. Audible had purchased the book, but it was still months away from being released.

"Have you started writing the sequel?"

"No, wait, should I be writing a sequel?"

It had not occurred to me that the first book would be successful enough to merit a sequel. I felt like I had pulled off a giant scam in getting Audible to record and release it and that would just be that. I would get a very nice email saying, "Well, thanks for writing the book, Alex. The only people who bought it were your immediate family members and only some of them. So, we won't be interested in speaking to you ever again."

Thanks to all of you wonderful people reading this, I was wrong. I found that there is a group of people out there that enjoyed the book and wanted another one. This was great news, and also terrifying because know I had to write a whole other book.

And this brought to me a big question I had been avoiding answering the whole time I put off writing another Andrea Vernon book: What is the point? I didn't want to just write the next episode with all the same beats as the first, but the villains have cybernetic mustaches and there a few more office specifics. Maybe the coffee machine is sentient.

(Wait, I kinda like that idea. Someone remind me to put a sentient coffee machine in the next one.)

My books are purposefully light and fun, but I write about things that are important to me. The first book is about waking up every day to work a corporate job when you never thought you would be that person. I've mentioned this a few places, but for those who did not know, my wife was five months pregnant with our son when I started AV1 and I made the looming terror a fertilized egg because that was the scariest thing in my life. There is an egg that is going to hatch and our heroes are trying to prepare but they have no idea what they're up against. Just like me. (I had a book on how to raise a baby that I was going to get around to reading, but then Oscar was born two and a half weeks early and so I just had to wing it)

With AV2, I had to write it about what I cared about. I don't want to say too much and influence your read of it, but I will say this book is different because my life is different and my priorities are a million miles apart from where they were when I sat down to write AV1. Book 1 is about the unknown, but my second child was born while writing AV2, and that is why this book is not about confronting the unknown, it is about having something you want to protect and having times when you feel utterly powerless to do so. I'm telling y'all this now because you might not notice it as AV2 still a comedy about a bunch of flawed superhumans trying to save the world.

Andrea's back! Ms. Oh's back! The Big Axe, Señora Fuego are back, Lightning Hwang, CUPpy, Head Start, Dr. Srinivasan, Kitchen Sink, Permafrost...okay I'm starting to realize I have way too many characters to keep going. Anyway, they're back along with some new characters that I loved writing.

Andrea Vernon and the Superhero Industrial Complex drops tomorrow. I hope you enjoy it. If you do, please rate and review because that really, really, really helps. It's because of your reviews that there's a sequel to listen to.

Thanks, everyone.