One of the reasons I’m doing the blog challenge this year is so that I will be ready for Nano in November. Every time I have been successful in Nanowrimo, it’s been after a successful Blogtober.

The book I want to write (at least get a good start on) is the sequel novel to The Repossessed Ghost. It’s a story I’ve been thinking about for almost 10 years.

With that much forethought, you’d think I’d be more prepared than I am.

At this point, I just have a collection of ideas. There is a couple of characters I want to introduce that I think are going to be a blast to write. There will be more travel in Mel’s future. Compared to The Repossessed Ghost, the sequel is going to be a bit more involved, and a little bit bigger in scope.

I still want to keep it light and fun to read. But I want to reward readers that pay close attention. There are some details I’m prepared to sow into this story that should make it extremely satisfying to people that read stories the way I do.

I’ve learned so much since I wrote the first book. I’m not too worried about it, but I do wonder if I’ll be able to capture the same tone and humor of The Repossessed Ghost.

Without going into spoilers, most of the characters from the first book will be returning in the second. I touch on most of the characters in the short story I mentioned yesterday, but we don’t really see much of them. I want to expand their stories in the second novel.

When I first started writing The Repossessed Ghost, I didn’t have a title. I just called it The Mel Walker Story and eventually, while I was reading one of the drafts to Melissa, the jokey title came to me and stuck. I imagine something like that will happen with the sequel novel.

With the first book, I didn’t exactly work from an outline. I used the flashlight approach, which I’ll talk about later this month. For the sequel, I want to have a good, solid outline. I’m more comfortable with outlines than I was 10 years ago. Also, this story is going to be more complicated. The only way I’m going to be able to keep track of all of it while putting it together is to establish timelines and the order of events before hand, which means working from an outline.

I was talking to Mike Baltar about what it is to write a Mel Walker story. With a mystery, the characters are gathering clues in order to figure out who did the crime, and why. A Mel Walker story is sort of like a mystery turned inside out. Because Mel can do what he does, he can quickly learn the end of the mystery. Hand him the murder weapon and he’ll pull a vision off of it that will not only show him who committed the crime, but what was going on their head. That’s powerful.

A Mel Walker story is more about discovering the journey along the way. It’s about figuring out what to do with information that no one else has. In Mel Walker’s world, the police aren’t just going to take a psychic’s word for anything. And, like what happened in The Repossessed Ghost, if Mel isn’t careful, he’ll draw unwanted attention to himself. From the perspective of the authorities, how else can Mel know so much about the crime if he wasn’t the one that committed it?

I like these stories. I like telling them, and I think they’re unique and fresh.

A common compliment I’ve received about The Repossessed Ghost is that it is very easy to read, that it hooks the audience, and keeps them turning pages all the way to the end. I need to recapture that essence in the sequel. Spin City is a slower story that builds gradually over time. Synthetic Dreams is a more cerebral story, that keeps the reader interested, but it isn’t an adventure the way The Repossessed Ghost is. That’s what I need to accomplish in the sequel. Get in with both feet running, and keep things light and engaging from beginning to end.

I think I can do that.

The more I think about it, the more excited I am for November, when I get to actually start. Until then, I have a lot of prep work to do.