Sandstone Press

On sequels

Posted by Simon Varwell on 10th May 2010

Sequels are funny beasts.  There are great ones, and awful ones.  From across the range of entertainment media, there are classic follow-ups such as Radiohead’s second album “The Bends” or Star Wars sequel “The Empire Strikes Back”.  Then there are disappointments like The Stone Roses’ “The Second Coming” (and a long time coming it was) or films that should never have been made like the sequels to The Matrix.

With a sequel, you’re presumably dealing with an original that was good enough that folk want more; yet you have the challenges of maintaining something of the feel of the original, doing something fresh with that template, and above all being either as good as or better than what came before.

For those reasons, I’ve been sitting down in recent weeks to get stuck into the sequel to “Up The Creek Without a Mullet” with some trepidation.  I’m delighted that the gaffers at Sandstone Towers wanted to publish the early days of the mission - and I am well aware that statistically I am very lucky to have a book published at all.  That they want to follow up with a second is even more wonderful, although the pressure is on to deliver, and to overcome those challenges above.

In a sense, the story’s all there for me, in that my mullet-hunting adventures in England, Canada, New Zealand and the USA have been done, and just like the original it’s - broadly speaking - a case of sitting down and writing them up.  How fiction writers do it, I’ve no idea.  I’ve got ready-made characters and a story that’s vivid in my mind and notes, while a novelist, scarily, has to make the whole stuff up from scratch.

But the challenge remains - I need to keep telling the story, I need to provide something new and avoid being repetitive, and I need to make sure it’s as good as “Up The Creek Without a Mullet” and, ideally, better.

In a way, I am confident.  The four adventures were great fun and I had some great experiences, the bare bones of which you can find in my blog’s archives.  I am sure there are some things worth retelling in the form of a book, such as my mad dash across New Zealand with media in tow, my adventures in darkest Sussex, and my roadtrip up the west coast of the USA which was… well, you’ll hopefully find out.  Plus, I’ve agreed a provisional deadline with Sandstone Towers for a first draft.

However, I am not forgetting a number of things.  First, I have lots of work to do before I can put in a draft for consideration.  Second, I need to make this “The Bends” and not “The Second Coming”.  And thirdly and most acutely, even if all goes well I am still only halfway through visiting my mullets…