So Turns Out Writing a Sequel Is Hard...

EDITED TO ADD: HOLY CRAP, Y'ALL, I'M ON AMAZON!! I realize this probably seems like a stupid thing to be excited about since, um, being on Amazon is kind of a foregone conclusion when you write a book, BUT STILL. It's my name! And release date! And ISBN number!! I have to go lie down now...



Hello, all! I know, I know, I've been totally incommunicado here lately, but please don't take it personally! The BFF actually left a message on my phone the other day that can be summed up as, "Why do you never return my phone calls? Are you dead, or under something heavy, or just a total bee-yotch?"

Of course, it was none of those things, and more that HEX HALL 2: THE HEXONING (also not really the title), has taken over my life, and is slowly eating my soul.

That's not to say that I don't like it. I am COMPLETELY in love with HEX HALL 2: HEXLECTRIC BOOGALOO. In a lot of ways, I think it's better than HEX HALL, but man, oh man, has it been hard to write. So lemme explain why.

I always planned the HEX HALL books to be a trilogy. Three books just felt like the right amount of space in which to tell this particular story since The HEX HALL series deals with three very different, but very connected "groups:" 1)"Prodigium," basically any supernatural creature you can think of, witches, werewolves, faeries, vampires, etc.; 2)Um...another group of supernatural creatures that I can't mention without spoiling the entire first book. And 3)the groups of humans who hunt Prodigium.

So all of that is a very complicated way of saying that I always planned on writing a trilogy, with Book 1 devoted to Prodigium, Book 2 dealing with that other group of supernatural creatures PLUS Prodigium, and Book 3 throwing crazy, monster-hunting humans into the mix. Good times!

What I had not planned on was how freakin' hard that is! Especially because I think that the the 2nd book is really the key to a good trilogy. I told Agent Holly and Editor Jen pretty early on that HEX HALL 2: HEX AND CANDY was my "Empire Strikes Back" book. You have to raise the stakes, expand the world-building, pull threads from Book 1 through Book 2 without necessarily tying up those threads...yeah, maybe you can see why I went deep underground to finish this one up!


HEX HALL 2: LET'S TALK ABOUT HEX is exactly like this. Only with vampires.

Oh, plus, in the middle of all this SEQUEL OF DOOOOOOM stuff, The Husband was gone for 2 weeks, which was lamesauce. Single moms the world over have nothing but my complete respect and admiration, because it was HARD looking after Small Son all on my own (especially since I was spending so much time crying and petting my computer and asking fictional characters why they wanted to hurt me so bad.)
But the book is in the polishing stage now, and I don't feel as completely COOOONSUUUUUMED by it as I did a few weeks ago, so I will probably be around on the blog a whole lot more now!

Hmmm...what else....oh! I still don't have a cover to show yet, but I'm not angsting too hard over that. For one thing, I trust that whatever Hyperion peeps come up with will rock, and for another, I totally understand why it's hard to come up with the perfect image for HEX HALL, since the book is very much, "Hey! You got your dark in my funny! No, you got your funny in my dark!"

And of course, since it's a trilogy, there will need to be some unity to all the covers, so whatever they create for this first book will have to fit the other 2 as well. You can see where this is a tall order!

BUT if you would like to go look at some other covers of YA books coming out in 2010, may I lead you here?

Look how preeeeeettttty... Seriously, y'all, 2010 is going to be an AWESOME year for YA!