Why I’m Writing a Sequel

[Spoilers for Vagabond and minor information about Royals]

Vagabond was not supposed to get a sequel. It was supposed to be a single book, one and done, then I move on to my main series. But now I am, in fact, writing a sequel. I am a little, nobody author who will likely not get any major monetary gains from writing it as I continue into my fourth year of writing it as of 2024. So why would I take all the time and effort into writing a second book? To put it simply, I realized I wasn’t finished once I reached the end of the first book.

As I neared the end of Vagabond, I was thinking out the epilogue in advance. I knew how I wanted the story to end, but that didn’t mean it was the end of their lives. (Um, spoilers, I guess. No one dies.) What came after ‘Happily Ever After’?

For one thing, while I could have just left certain things be as they weren’t important in terms of the main goal of the first book, I wanted to dig into them more. How does Kurt handle being able to leave the palace grounds without need for his disguise? Has Maerwynn truly come to terms with being a princess and all that it entails? How do both of them cope with being a couple after being so self-indulgent for so long? I had to answer these questions for my own sake: especially that last one.

While the first book was about the two schemers coming together, this one will be about how they learn to grow with one another, working as a team, and facing all the new challenges that happen in life, both royal and every day. I never had any doubt that the two would work out, but I had to figure out just how. I tried to condense it all into that epilogue at first, but it began expanding further and further. I thought I might be satisfied if I just wrote brief mentions of what lay in Kurt and Maerwynn’s futures, but those small sentences drew out in my head and before I knew it I had several chapters worth of stories that I couldn’t just let stew around in there!

Now, of course, writing a sequel simply because I wanted to is a well enough reason for me to take on the project, but I also have a strong desire to write something with a greater purpose. Stories are told to entertain, teach lessons, and resonate with others. I had to justify if writing out these new chapters was just fluff to make me happy or if there would there be a point to it all. Ultimately, I think so.

So many sequels to movies where a couple gets together begin with them having broken up off-screen only for them to get back together again by the end. I hate this trope. There are some cases where it works, yes, but more often than not it’s done to essentially tell the same story again. I don’t want to do that. I want to see what’s next for not only our main characters but many of the supporting cast as well.

When I create characters, I think of everything I possibly can about them. So many times I have wanted to bring up details about supporting characters like Mavis, Daniel, Vivian, or Nievan that I just didn’t have time to veer off the main plot for. This time with the sequel being a bit more of an anthology of the life and times of Kurt and Maerwynn, we can really dig into the rest of the cast just as much. The focus is still the main couple of the last book, of course, but the world doesn’t revolve around them (as much as I’m sure they would like it). I’m so excited to revisit these characters in a new light as well as adding a few new characters into the mix for some interesting dynamics!

New characters are a necessity. There were only eight major players in Vagabond (nine if you count Sir Liam), and while there’s nothing wrong with that (sometimes too many characters is quite the burden), as we expand on these characters lives, there are sure to be many more encounters. A social gal like Maerwynn is going to make a lot of new friends (and maybe some enemies) in her new home, and even Kurt, now learning to open up to others, may find kindred spirit or two. Who knows, perhaps we’ve even met some of them in the previous book! There’s so much to expand on, and that’s why I have to keep writing.

I’m likely about half way through Royals at this point, and I would really love to have it finished by the end of 2024 (Hi from the future, that didn’t end up happening). I think this truly will be the final book in the chronicles of Kurt and Maerwynn, but I think that’s okay. I even think it’s okay if I decided there was only one book; but I want more. There’s still so much to explore, and I truly hope that there are others itching to see what becomes of our protagonists as they endure the next chapters of their new lives together!