What Kicked Off The Sequel?

I've written before on the genesis of Forgotten Gods, so I'll say a bit about how my coauthor and I came up with the idea for The Devil and the Excise-Man. We knew from the beginning we wanted to do a sequel, since there were way too many juicy plot possibilities created by the first book. Having a number of ready-made plot threads waiting to be resolved did help a lot. But we knew we needed a central backbone, a main plot which would tie the disparate and sometimes abstract conflicts together.

New character number one, Dr. Andrew MacPhearson, came into being when I got into an argument with someone over the ethics of experimenting on animals. As we went through the usual paces, I had a 'lightbulb moment'. If I couldn't agree with an equally educated scientist about animal sentience and whether experimenting on them in the pursuit of 'pure knowledge' was okay, what would an 18th century medical researcher think when confronted with an array of intelligent but distinctly non-human creatures which he was itching to understand? It was too interesting to pass up.

The second new character (and titular employee of Treasury and Excise) came from Michael's desire to explore how people can throw their support behind...well, the Evil Empire.

Once we had Max Thorley, the Excise-man, the plot fell into place. And no, I'm not going to spoil the book! You will have to read it yourselves.