Ideas to reboot the Island of Fog series

No, I'm not planning to rewrite the books or anything like that; this "reboot" is more for the benefit of publishers. You see, I learned long ago that publishers might not be interested in my books because... well, because they're already published. And I couldn't undo that even if I wanted to, which I don't. I like self-publishing.

But there's no reason I can't produce Island of Fog-ish books exclusively for submission to publishers. I can't simply rename the books because that would be cheating, but I can write spin-off books or prequels that are based on the series but otherwise completely unique.

So by "reboot" I mean writing about different characters in a similar situation. The obvious choice is delving into an era before Hal and his friends came along -- way back when Miss Simone and her classmates were discovering themselves. I have everything I need already in place. The characters are there, the world is there, even the background history is there. I would be writing about my familiar world but from a fresh new perspective. Fans of the series would instantly relate to it, but new readers would see it as a completely new series that stands on its own.

I would also benefit from several books' worth of experience. When I look at Island of Fog now, I keep finding clunky sentences and minor typos and missing hyphens... In other words, I feel like (and hope) I've learned a few things over the last few years. They say you should never submit your first novel to a publisher. Or your second. Well, by the end of August I would have written five, not to mention a couple of others in the background. Hopefully that's enough "practice" in the eyes of a publisher! Five books is half a million words, after all.

The problem with writing about Miss Simone and her classmates is that, according to the story, they all began shapeshifting at age eight. I started off my series aiming for MG (middle grade readers age 9-12) but I think they've shifted a little towards YA (young adult readers age 12+). An eight-year-old main character wouldn't work in either case, and since I plan to label my spin-off novels YA, I really need a main character who is around fourteen or so. Therefore I wouldn't be able to follow Miss Simone directly the way I followed Hal; I would have my new fourteen-year-old working with the young shapeshifters, perhaps unaware of what's going on until they start changing...

There are lots of ways I could go about this, but in all cases I'd be writing about "what I know" -- in other words, a world I've already created and am familiar with. I think having an obvious familiarity with a vast number of small details introduced throughout the Fog series will come through in a new, back-to-the-beginning novel, even though the main character will be someone entirely different.

I had another idea, too, that takes place several years after the current Fog series. I'm going to add a small tie-in toward the end of Roads of Madness, a sort of foreshadowing for that future book. In fact I'm about to write it into an upcoming scene. This foreshadowing will probably go unnoticed by most, but if I ever write that tie-in/spin-off novel, then fans will be able to look back and say, "Ah yes!" and point triumphantly at the page. I like stuff like that.

At the moment I'm thinking of writing these spin-offs exclusively for submission to publishers, but failing all else I would end up with a set of new books that I could self-publish for fans later on. :-)