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.