The Pros and Cons of Writing a Prequel!

If you've been following this blog and my Facebook pages, you are aware that I'm writing a prequel to the Terra-Bravo Saga. Part of the reason I wrote Foothold on Terra-Bravo before the prequel was to get people hooked on the action and characters. Another reason why I delayed writing the prequel was to see how current events play out in our universe before addressing them in the universe of Terra-Prime, the starting point of the Terra-Bravo Saga.

But I'm discovering the pros and cons of writing a prequel.

Pros:

1) Knowing where I want to lead the characters to!

2) I'm much more familiar with the characters than when I wrote Foothold or Crisis. 

3) Writing their dialogue is much easier.

4) I've left clues to their pasts in the other books so now I can expand upon those clues.

Cons:

1) Not getting ahead of myself.

2) Establishing the relationships between characters in the proper sequence.

3) Remembering minutia from stories I've already written and moved beyond! (Hey, I know I've got a pretty good memory but WOW!)

4) Not getting carried away with expanding the backstories beyond where the characters are in the future stories.

So, I'm making headway on the prequel, both excited by the chance to visit this storyline but also constrained by it. While allergies and work-related stressors are slowing me down somewhat, I'm still on target for a May e-release!

Marketing of Other E-books

I'm still marketing my three published works primarily by word-of-mouth; e-mails; and Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and blog posts. As time and funding allows, I'll expand this marketing.

*****

Enough for tonight. I hope each of you remain safe and healthy!

Jeffrey

© Jeffrey M. Fortney - 2014