To Sequel Or Not To Sequel

I've found in the two novels I've written, that my story is an on-going journey for each of my characters.  Some writers I'm sure like to tie up all the details in a book, so the reader knows exactly what the ending is and where the characters will be going.  I don't find life to be like that so I tend to write the same way, a possibility of an ending, ambiguous, a maybe, perhaps even a definite maybe.

So when people ask me if I'm writing a sequel to either book, it's like asking me to be a fortune teller.  Now I have to see into the future and take them on a new journey.  I toyed with the idea for the first novel, FLYING OUT OF BROOKLYN.  I thought perhaps I should consider Judith, then her daughter, then her daughter's daughter.  Three generations, twenty years apart.  But with the advent of the second book, SOWN IN TEARS, reviewers have actually suggested that they're hoping to see a continuation of the story, follow Leah and her two sons.Where do they go?  What happens to them?  Even I'm getting intrigued.

I have to admit I'm never happier than when I'm starting out on a research project, gathering the elements that will become the characters' world.  Of course the trick is not to get so involved with your research and the minutia that you dig up, that you forget your story and the conflicts, upsets, problems, victories (sometimes) that your readers are waiting for.

Never thought I'd be starting up so soon, but if you want to be a writer, you have to write and write and write and write. Turn off the emails, unplug the tv, silence the phone.

What a way to start the New Year!

Hacking, auto mishap, computer glitch - what a way to start the New Year.  But with today's technology, these have become normal events to be endured and overcome. Even technology can't be relied on. I remember the first time the computer went out in the midst of writing FLYING OUT OF BROOKLYN.  OMG, what am I going to do, no computer.  Well, of course there are always pens, pencils and paper. What did people do even before we had those implements?  They made marks with a rock on stone. We're too tied to too many "things." I don't want to wax sentimental, but things don't matter at the end of the day or   It helps if they make you comfortable but they don't define you.  Or do they?

Compared to what others have gone through lately, blips in technology can be tolerated.  Even the heroine in my second novel, SOWN IN TEARS, puts me to shame when I start complaining.  I need to go more with the flow in 2013. Really what better choice do we have?