About 3 times a week I get an email asking me if I’m planning to write a sequel to the Demon Child Trilogy. (On the off days the emails are asking about Second Sons). The last email to this effect from Melinda (Hi Melinda!) also came accompanied by a question on the blog, so I have decided to answer the question, once and for all, with an unequivocal… maybe.

See, here’s the thing. The prequel Hythrun Chronicles came about because we’d already sold Second Sons to Random House when the Tor offer came in for the Demon Child Trilogy. They wanted to know if there was anything else on offer, and because we’d sold the other series to another publisher, my agent suggested I “bash up a synopsis” for a sequel.

As I only had an afternoon in which to do this, and couldn’t think of anything remotely resembling a plot –  although, I’ll admit the goat-herder/lost prince scenario was tempting, as was the raw-talent misfit kid going off to magician school, but I suspect they’ve been done before – I shamelessly raided the back story of the Wolfblade family and offered it up as prequel. My agent assured me nothing more would come of it and I went back to planning Tide Lords, which was the project I really wanted to work on at the time.

When the offer came in from Tor, it was for the six book series. Tide Lords was shoved aside (OK... you have to understand it was a very nice offer ) and I set to work creating the Hythrun Chronicles (Wolfblade, Warrior and Warlord). It made my head hurt, writing a prequel I never intended to write to make it fit the other series. For almost a year on my whiteboard there was a list entitled These People Must Die which was the names of all the characters I had to get rid of by the end of Warlord (Book 3) to explain why they never turned up in the Demon Child Trilogy.

The upshot of this, of course, was that by the time I was finished the Hythrun Chronicles I was convinced I had a brain tumor and was ready to nuke Medalon, Hythria, Fardohnya and Karien and turn the entire world into a molten lump of rock.

The problem is… everyone wants Brak back. And then there’s the whole “what happened to R’shiel” thing and what about Damin and Adrina…

What has stopped me from pursuing it until now is that I fear the series is suffering from Buffyitis – that’s a condition you get when you are faced, over and over, with the apocalypse to end all apocalypses, and you have to find a way to make it interesting, not to mention plausible. I mean, R’shiel killed a god, for pity’s sake! That’s a Die Now moment, don’t you think? It’s kinda downhill from there, and how many rogue gods can one world spew out in a reasonable amount of time, anyway…

Bottom line is this: I have an idea for a plot. I thought it up about 2 weeks ago over a cup of coffee with a friend, but I can’t remember which friend or any of the details (I’m pretty deep into Tide Lords, at the moment, and then I got burgled, remember). I have been asking everyone I know if it was them, and I’m hoping someone will come back to me and remind me of the brilliant idea I had any day now. I have nice friends. I’m sure the culprit will ‘fess up, sooner or later, after they’ve finished laughing at me.

So, there you have it. I have a plot (soon as I find it). What I don’t have is time, because I still have two and a half books to complete for Tide Lords, and that is going to take me another two years at least.

There will probably be a sequel to the Demon Child Trilogy.

Just don’t hold your breath.