Prequel or sequel?

I’ve haven’t posted anything for a bit, mainly because I was finishing off the new book. As I’m sure I’ve mentioned before, someone once wrote that poems are never finished, only abandoned.  The same is true, of course, for any work in any medium.  You can go on revising and tweaking forever but at some point it’s probably best if you just give up and let go of the darned thing.

So here it is, THE DARK AMBASSADORS.  The subtitle, ‘First Vampires of Brighton’ raises a question.  This book follows THE BLOODY BROTHERS, the subtitle of which was ‘Last Vampires of Brighton’.  The new book, featuring the same vampire brothers, is set in 1808 and the first was set in 1977.  So, is the new one a prequel or a sequel?  The Oxford English Dictionary defines a prequel as ‘a story or film containing events that precede those of an existing work’ – which everyone already knows because we’re so accustomed to them by now.  But here’s the thing…it defines a sequel as a work that ‘continues the story or develops the theme of an earlier one’.  Can something be both a prequel and a sequel?

In the Star Wars franchise, the first three movies were suddenly relegated to parts 4, 5 and 6 by the appearance of three prequels – and this is where things maybe get a bit clearer because, for me, it’s all to do with the order in which you are supposed to watch or read.  It makes more sense to read the first book, THE BLOODY BROTHERS, before the new one, THE DARK AMBASSADORS – so that the latter is a prequel that’s actually more of a sequel.  That said, it wouldn’t ruin either to read them in the opposite order.  So, I’ve decided to call THE DARK AMBASSADORS a companion to the first book, thus, I hope, lifting the curse of the prequel/sequel question, which might not even have been a big deal in the first place!

As with my first novel, BAGMAN, I wrote THE BLOODY BROTHERS as a one-off then I thought, after publication, that there might be some more to be mined from the characters.  Do the writers of multiple-volumed fantasy epics go through the same process or do they plan out their vast series from the start?  But that’s a topic for another day. 

Happy writing!