The S-word

 

So.  Is there going to be a sequel to SHADOWS?

I DON’T FRELLING KNOW.  I DOUBT IT.  BUT.  IT’S JUST ABOUT POSSIBLE.  MAYBE. 

Which is an improvement on ‘NO.  NOW SHUT UP AND GO AWAY.  SHUT UP AND GO AWAY NOW.’  Right?*

Now as I have said here on a number of occasions previously, and often at top volume, I have been surprised by the vehemence of the demand for a sequel to SUNSHINE.  Not that it does the demanders any good.  The answer is still no.**

But SHADOWS . . .?

. . . To Be Continued.  Since I seem to have let myself get distracted again.***

* * *

* There is still no sequel to SUNSHINE.  All those of you who think you MUST HAVE ONE, repeat 1,000,000 times and then take a cold shower.  And just by the way, although I was more or less braced for the s-word question about SHADOWS I was not at all braced for the comments about SHADOWS being ‘kind of’ a sequel to SUNSHINE or that the worlds are very similar.  WHAT?  Aside from the chief fact that they’re both written by me, and most authors do have each his or her own singular voice which is still there behind the adaptation to each individual story, and that SUNSHINE and SHADOWS are both alt-mod urban America and told in first person by a cranky young woman I don’t see them as similar enough to warrant a lot of comparison.^  ‘Alt-mod urban America and told in first person by a cranky young woman’ would cover a bazillion titles currently teeming on Amazon.  The two of these I wrote are more similar to each other than they are to any of my ‘high’ fantasies, sure, but very few readers think that DEERSKIN is the elusive Third Damar Novel despite its being a third-person narration about a Young Woman Who Does Things with a throwaway reference to Damar^^ . . . or that SPINDLE is a sequel to DEERSKIN for similar reasons.

^ The military don’t figure in SUNSHINE and SOF are (mostly) good guys many of whom have a rather interesting take on the Others themselves which (I will tell you for free) is not shared by SHADOWS’ army dudes.  For example.  And there’s no Con equivalent in SHADOWS.  Speaking of Con, SUNSHINE has the Others as the chief problem, whereas SHADOWS has cobeys.  But the great spectacular drooling difference from where I sit is that SUNSHINE has no animals in it.+  You can’t turn a page in SHADOWS without tripping over a critter, and the more pages you turn the furrier it gets.  I still don’t know how I managed to write an animal-free novel, but there you go.  The muse is a funny . . . critter.

Oh, and I apologise for the parallelism of the two titles.  Never occurred to me when SHADOWS’ title emerged from the . . . shadows.  Nothing I could do about it, but I admit it’s misleading.

+ No, Mrs Bialosky does not count.

^^ Can’t remember if any of the references to other high fantasies by McKinley made the final cut of PEGASUS or not.  If they didn’t . . . there are still two books to go.+

+ Siiiiiiigh . . . .

** I WOULD FRELLING LOVE TO WRITE A SEQUEL TO SUNSHINE.  As I have also said (often) before.  I’m not (not) doing this out of some perverse desire to torture my fans and lose money on sales and other interesting and unique reasons.  I’m not writing a sequel because I haven’t got a sequel to write.  The Story Council has not deigned to send me one.  If it’s any comfort it’s a lot more frustrating for me than for any mere reader, however impassioned, because of the weird way that authors—well, some authors anyway, this author anyway—frelling LIVES in the story/stories she writes.  I know so much more about any story I’ve ever written than ever gets on the page—certainly than ever stays on the page—since the biggest part of any storyteller’s job is choosing which bits to tell.  I don’t know how many other writers waste insane amounts of time looking in cupboards and under rocks for remnants and curiosities that they know they won’t ever use but I bet there are a lot of us.  There is the excuse—in fact the good excuse—that you need to know as much as possible to do a better job of choosing.  But some of it is just oooh.  Shiny.  Even the icky bits are (mostly) oooh-shiny because of the weirdness of discovery.  I guess this is probably aggravated by the world-building aspect of fantasy and science fiction, but OUTLAWS doesn’t have any magic in it and I still opened a lot of cupboards in the writing.^

Anyway.  I know a lot about SUNSHINE’s world.  A lot a lot A FRELLING FRELLING LOT, and very pit-viperishly frustrating I find it too.  Because I’ve only got about a third of a story to hang on it or under it or through it or something.  And it’s not a continuous third either, so don’t get your hopes up about the novella.

There is no sequel to SUNSHINE.^^  Get used to it.^^^

^ And read a lorry-load of frelling history books, attempting historical accuracy braaaaaaaaaaaaaak.  I’m not doing that again.+

+ I hope.  I’ve got about a third of the sequel to OUTLAWS flapping around in a spare mental room too, but I’m not sorry I don’t seem to have to write that one.  The only thing that might make me like the prospect# is having the opportunity to tell the story of how Robin was not murdered by a homicidal abbess.  I haven’t got a problem with the idea that women can be villains too.  But it bites me big time that the standard Robin Hood retellings have no women characters worth mentioning but just to make sure that the whole violent misogynist bias hasn’t escaped your attention a woman comes centre stage long enough at the end TO KILL THE HERO.  Treacherously.  Great.  Splendid.  This is another of those things that made me a feminist, like LORD OF THE RINGS and Susan in THE LAST BATTLE.

# MORE PEOPLE DIE.  I DON’T LIKE CHARACTERS DYING.  I had a very rough time with Guy of Gisbourne.  I had to kill DOGS.

^^ There are also practical problems.  Which I may write a blog about some day.  And then again I may not.

^^^ In case you want to remind yourselves:  http://robinmckinleysblog.com/2008/12/02/there-is-no-sequel-to-sunshine/

*** If anyone ever took footnotes away from me I’d die.  I keep absent-mindedly wanting to put footnotes in KES.