In horror movie-land sequels are pretty much a par for the course. You make a good horror film, it seems it only makes sense to go back and milk the idea a second time. In the world of horror books (note - not dark fantasy or paranormal romance, I mean HORROR) this has been less common. I'm not saying they don't exist - Graham Masterton's Manitou and James Herbert's Rats both started series - and sure you get books set in a repeated environs - take Gary Braunbeck's Cedar Hill short stories and novels, and Stephen King's version of Maine. But straight sequels, picking up the action from the end of the prior book or soon after, haven't filled the shelves in bookstores. I guess part of the reason for this is the rather final end that most horror books have. Zombies are destroyed, vampires staked, demons exorcised, witches burned etc, etc. Okay, Dracula can be resurrected over and over but mostly you get to the end and that's it. Recently though this seems
Anyone who has been reading my earlier postings here and on twitter knows I have been going through a difficult patch in my writing over the past few weeks and months. When my wife had her mini-stoke earlier this year writing was irrelevant. Everything was. Now she is recovered I have chance to pick it up again only I'm finding I'm a different person to this time last year. The novel I was writing back in December/January that is maybe three quarters done does not interest me . Maybe this is because that's what I was writing when... I don't know. All I know is try as I might that is not happening. So I needed something else to try. And then when that failed something else...and something else...and something else again. Being honest the only thing that has gone okay since January - at least okay enough to see my type "The End" - was another Ben Williamson novella, called Room 1B. Now this is not a bad thing as I have had the first two of these publish
It is the last day of the month and so the last day or NaNoWriMo. I'm not going to make it to 50K and I'm happy with that. At the time of writing this I am on 47,737 for the month so within touching distance. The only thing is it's gone 10pm and I have no desire to pull an all nighter and use the difference in time zones between England and wherever it is the NaNoWriMo servers are to justify making it at 4am or something like that. I'm not a young man anymore and the days of being able to work to stupid hours and be in the office bright eyed and bushy tailed are long behind me. No I'm done for the night. I guess that mini-block in the middle of the month really did me in. So I am going to learn from this. I went in to the month thinking 50K should be easy. After all I'd written an 88,000 word novel from scratch in not much more than that. Well I am going to learn not to be so confident about it. Each project is different and takes the time it takes. I guess
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