Good afternoon.
     I’m currently writing a thematic sequel to ‘Sympathy for the Enemy’ a story that I’m trying to sell to the Australasian market. It’s actually got a fairly good chance of acceptance (1 in 3, which is better betting odds than most; hurrah for informed decision making processes), but it’s not exactly a done deal, is it? So why, the bloody hell, am I writing another story related to it?
     Well, on one level you don’t need to have ever read ‘Sympathy for the Enemy’ to make sense of ‘For the Time After’ (well, that’s the plan). Also, it’s a thematic sequel (regular readers of this column will know my distaste of sequels…) and thus if the first story gets rejected the second can still be sent out into the wilderness…
     Which leads me to the big question; if ‘Sympathy of the Enemy’ does sell, do I submit the thematic sequel to the same magazine or send it elsewhere? I have two other story ideas set in the same milieu, one of which is straight horror and thus not really applicable to the market this unnamed magazine sits in. If I ever write this story then I can’t really send it in good conscience to the magazine in question (although if they were to take story one and two, then I could send the third (if it were the third) in with a ‘I know it really isn’t your kind of thing, but…’ note attached to it…)… It’s all rather worrying (the number of ‘…’ I have in this paragraph alone (along with my bracketted asides in bracketted asides)).
     Still, am actualy writing non-academic work, so life be good