I wrote about some of my books yesterday – and about sequels, because quite a few people who’ve been kind enough to read my stories have asked about whether I’m going to continue the lives of particular characters in a new novel, in other words a sequel. What happens next to Deke and Michael who were last seen on a ferry heading back to the mainland from the island of Farholm? someone said. Does Rudi ever find happiness, and who really is Tyche? I’ve been asked by a friend who had read ‘The Stalking of Rosa Czekov’. Well, I know what happened, I know how their lives continued, but their story is only in my head and never to be written down!
“Lucky Portbraddon” is a very different book from any of my others because it is about a family; I’m not sure which genre it is – I suppose a family saga, maybe, although it doesn’t happen over several generations but just over a single year – a year which starts with the death of a beloved grandma just before New Year, and follows the lives of her grandsons and their families over the following year until the next Christmas. It is told mainly from the perspective of a visitor who for various reasons becomes involved in their complicated lives and relationships. I’m not sure any reader would wonder what happened next to them all, as they might with Deke and Michael after ‘Farholm‘ or Tyche and Rudi at the end of ‘Rosa Czekov‘, but as a writer and the characters’ creator, for a while they still were lively and active in my mind.
I think it’s the same for the characters in ‘night vision’, that everything is resolved in the final chapters – however, and there is always a ‘however’, a couple of the characters reappear in one of the Radwinter books! Although ‘night vision’ has what I call a ‘satisfactory ending’, rather than necessarily a happy ending, when two of the characters appear in “Saltpans” there truly is a happy ending for one – something very much more embarrassing and almost humiliating for the other. The Radwinter books have, as you will know if you follow my witterings, become an eight book series – much to my surprise, and #8 is struggling to get itself sorted and ready for publication.
When that long-awaited day (long-awaited by me at least, and hopefully my loyal readers) I must try something new and different, even though there’s a lurking Radwinter #9 set in Somerset grumbling away in the background. So what would be new, what would be different? I keep writing about rivers and water which is part of my own life-story, so maybe I should write about something watery, something aqueous, maybe something semi-autobiographical, something which will challenge me, something which will stretch me. I have some ideas on those fronts, but before that I must shake myself out of the lazy writing-rut I’ve sunk into.Another thing to think about, another anthology! I have so many short stories I’ve written, for my writing group and for myself, either as self-imposed challenges, plus all those ideas, not to mention my vivid dreams, my observations and my random (very random) thoughts!
Here, I hope are links to the books:
!https://www.amazon.co.uk/LUCKY-PORTBRADDON-Lois-Elsden/dp/B08TQ479B9
http://www.amazon.co.uk/-stalking-rosa-czekov-Lois-Elsden/dp/B08M7J3SZG/
Lois Elsden 