To Sequel Or Not To Sequel

By Ariella Papa Author of Momfriends 

Right from the very beginning people have been asking me if I’m ever going to write a sequel. And I’ve always said no. I answered this question defensively as more of a reader than a writer. It makes me mad (mostly) when authors try to tell me how the characters went on after I closed the book. I have my own ideas and that’s how I want it to be. The end.

So no, I would not be writing the Electric Boogaloo to any of my books.

But of course I live with someone who tells me all about the world of comic books and how characters can live in these worlds without necessarily being the focus of the story all the time. So my first three books existed in the same “universe” where characters from each book might make a cameo without giving away too much or supplanting what the faithful scholars of the Papa library had already determined was the future for their heroines.  

And yet now I have this pull to write a sequel to Momfriends. Maybe it’s because I feel like those three women have a lot more to say or I because people keep telling me funny “momstories” that I think are relevant and universal.

It’s also because it seems like it should be the natural progression. Keeping all my books in a similar genre is what I’m supposed to be doing as an author trying to build her brand.

But we girlfriends seem to have an aversion to doing what we’re supposed to be doing. (Anyone walk their duck lately?). I’ve got this other novel that’s almost all set to come to a digital device near you. It isn’t like anything I’ve ever written before and it doesn’t seem to be following the natural progression at all.  And we all know promoting something new is all consuming and not the most conducive to sequel writing.

And then when I try to sit down and write, it’s not the world of three thirty-ish Brooklyn moms that I want to inhabit – no, that would be easy. The voices that come to me are some fifty-year old hippies who live on a farm in Vermont and keep bees. What?!?!?!

But really it seems like I should be writing the sequel.

So my questions for you all are: To sequel or not to sequel? What has your experience been as authors and as readers?

Ariella Papa is an author most recently of Momfriends and Turn of the Century Stories