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Sophomore Slump. Second Book Syndrome. We've all heard the ways a sophomore book can tank for readers, and if you happen to be an author, too, well...you're probably very well familiar with how horrendous the experience of writing that first book under contract can be. But fear not, sophomores! It c
Second Book Syndrome
image courtesy of geralt via pixabay.com
I thought “second book syndrome” only hit on one’s actual second book.
Silly me.
I suffer from it with each series.
DAVY JONES DHARMA, the second Nautical Namaste Mystery, suffered from it, which is why its release date was pushed back. We’re getting there, thanks to a good editor who helps me navigate where it stumbled. But DAVY JONES…
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Top 5 Wednesday
https://www.goodreads.com/group/show/118368-top-5-wednesday
Topic: Second Book is Best
Unfortunately there are quiet a few trilogies I have on my bookshelf that I haven’t started yet or have only read the first book. So with second books like Golden Son and Windwitch, I have heard amazing things about these books but can’t add them, sadly. The other case is second books that actually went downhill in the series and I have read several of those. Thank goodness I do have enough second books that I have read on my shelf that were amazing.
1. A Court of Mist and Fury by Sarah J. Maas
Yes, I finally got around to reading this book! I got through a Court of Thorns and Roses with the inital intention of just reading it for ACOMAF. While I did, surprisingly, enjoy ACOTAR, ACOMAF is leagues ahead of it. Feyre’s development is amazing, and I thought Maas did a good job with portraying the trauma and recovery of what she had been through. I love Rhysand and the whole Inner Circle, I like the Hades/ Persephone parallels, and just the entire world building is fantastic. I may be cheating a little bit with this book because I haven’t read A Court of Wings and Ruin yet, but I don’t care because this book is amazing and deserves a spot on this list!
2. Crown of Embers by Rae Carson
This trilogy is grossly underrated. The first book was amazing, but the second book was just a step above. We are introduced to one of the villainous characters, who then has an antagonist to ally relationship with the main character (not a hate to love romance which I appreciate), Eliza’s self development as well as her growing relationships with those close to her, some minor gay representation, and unlike the first book, this one has a bit of a cliffhanger ending that keeps you hooked for the third book. Seriously everyone, read this series! At some point I will post a review explaining why this trilogy is so amazing.
3. Siege and Storm by Leigh Bardugo
The second and third positions were very close choices for me because these are both great books from trilogies that I love. What I liked most about this book was the introduction of Nikolai, character development on Zoya’s behalf, and seeing Alina in a leadership role and the sacrifices she is willing to make.
4. Invasion of the Tearling by Erika Johansen
I recently finished this trilogy and it was really good. I’m still not sure if I liked the first or second book better, because both have their strong and weak points. While what was going on the Kelsea kept me invested in her story line, the most interesting part was the flash backs to Lily’s point of view because that adds a whole extra layer of depth to the story.
5. The Riddle by Alison Croggen
It’s been a long time since I’ve read this one but I remember it being my favorite of the quartet and the one that I did fully reread twice. I do like this quartet and it’s complexity but I’m sorry to say I can’t say any more.
Bonus: In 2018, I read the Snow Like Ashes trilogy and the second book, Ice Like Fire, I would absolutely add to this list
Thank you Everyone’
Keep Calm and Keep Reading
Take note: Second books (published, at least) are usually hard. For almost every author.
NOTES ON WAVES
1. Originally, WAVES was going to be called WHY I AM NOT A POPSTAR and it was going to be a collection of short stories bookended by a couple of essays. I had it all planned out. The essays were going to be, ‘How I Became A Writer’ which I wrote last year and ‘Why I Am Not A Popstar’ which ended up becoming WAVES instead. Only, WAVES isn’t an essay. WAVES is probably best described as ‘a novelette.’ And I decided not to include anything else alongside it.
2. (I was trying to distract myself from another book about life and fear and terrorism that I started writing last year but got derailed from sometime around Christmas.)
3. Remember: when writing about your current terror starts to feel like too much, you can always dredge up some past traumas to distract yourself.
4. If something feels too painful to write about, you can simply wait 5 years and tell a fictionalized version of events through a character.
5. I told Sarah Jean that I wanted to do an ebook and she said that she had an idea for an ebook too and so we started working together, sending pages back and forth.
6. We work in very different ways. Sarah writes really fast and asked me to look at new parts of her book regularly. Every few hours sometimes. I would make a suggestion and she would change something and say, ‘What about now?’ And I would say, ‘Yeah!’
7. But I always feel like I need at least a completed outline of a draft before I can show anyone something I’m working on. I showed the WAVES manuscript to Sarah for the first time when the whole storyline was in place but the text was only 3000 words. Then again at 6000 words. And then again once it was all complete. She left a lot of comments on my google doc.
8. She would ask me questions like, ‘Does your character still think about her friend who died?’ and ‘What was so great about this guy anyway?’ And then I would go back and fill in the blanks with more information.
9. We have been editing together for four years now. Our own writing and other people’s.
10. The day before the publication of LOUD IDIOTS and WAVES, she wrote in an email to me, ‘[writing this] with you has been more fun than anything i've worked on creatively in a long long time!’
11. And I said, SAME.
12. WAVES is a story that has taken me over five years to write.
13. Emotionally, I mean! I couldn’t have done it before.
14. There is this Gustave Flaubert quote that I kept thinking of, it goes: ‘Be regular and ordinary in your life so that you may be violent and original in your work.’
15. I happily/temporarily/finally reached that point while I was writing this book. I went to bed early almost every night.
16. And then I woke up really early and continued writing.
17. WAVES was the working title of Kanye’s new album, The Life Of Pablo, for about a week.
18. The Waves is a book by Virginia Woolf, needless to say.
19. Both of those people are referenced in this story so that seemed kind of funny to me, to name it that.
20. Plus there’s a lot of water in it.
21. The cover is by Michael Inscoe. I asked him to make it because, when I thought about the story, I just thought, he will represent it best. I don’t know why.
22. I just love Michael!
23. I’m really happy about the way these two books fit together. LOUD IDIOTS by Sarah Jean Alexander and WAVES by me. I am so lucky to have Sarah Jean as a great friend and a great writer to write weird books with.
24. Anyway, if you’re interested, they are both available now at secondbook.club
(via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4yhrlVxW-Qg)
SO MUCH OF THIS!
Invest as much in books one, two, and ten as you did in book one. That is, don't shortchange books beyond the first one.
Writers Ask Writers: The ‘Difficult’ Second Novel
It's been a long time between drinks for the Writers Ask Writers gang but this month our friend and writing colleague Dawn Barker is launching her second novel Let Her Go and to celebrate the release we're sharing our experiences of producing our second books. But first, a little about Let Her Go:
Confused and desperate, Zoe McAllister boards a ferry to Rottnest Island in the middle of winter holding a tiny baby close to her chest, terrified that her husband will find her or that her sister will call the police.
Years later, a teenage girl, Louise, is found on the island, unconscious and alone. When she recovers and returns home she overhears her parents discussing her past. Their secrets, slowly revealed, will shatter more than one family and, for Louise, nothing will ever be the same again.
Let Her Go is a gripping, emotionally charged story of family, secrets and the complications of love. Part thriller, part mystery, it will stay with you long after you close the pages wondering ... what would you have done?
My Second Novel: Whisky Charlie Foxtrot
You often hear talk about the ‘difficult second novel’ and I could imagine how it might affect those authors whose debut novels are world-shaking successes. But it didn’t affect me, because when I started writing Whisky Charlie Foxtrot, my first novel, A New Map of the Universe had not yet been published. It had not even been accepted for publication. So I did not fear that I would disappoint millions of readers worldwide if my second book did not live up to the promise of my first. I didn't worry about boring my readers by writing something too similar, or alienating them by writing something too different. I didn’t think about my readers at all, because at that stage, I didn’t have any. This was a great blessing because it allowed me to write with complete freedom; simply to capture the idea that was inside my head.
Writing
When I was writing A New Map I was frequently paralysed by doubt about whether I could even write a book. I had so much more confidence the second time, because I had already proved I could write a book; I only had to solve the problems associated with this book.
I wrote A New Map as part of a PhD which meant that I treated writing as a job; a great privilege that sometimes felt like a burden. When I wrote Whisky Charlie Foxtrot, I was working four days a week in my first ‘grown-up’ job, developing and delivering accredited training to the retail sector. Writing was my hobby, something I only had one or two days a week for, and it became a pleasure and a treat rather than a chore.
The other factor that made the writing of my second book much easier was that I had a structure in place from the get-go. It was based on the phonetic alphabet (alpha, bravo charlie etc) with one chapter corresponding to each letter. I still had no idea of the plot, but whenever I got stuck, I had a springboard…Okay, this chapter’s called Lima, someone needs to go to Peru. Which of my characters might go there? And why?
Publication
People always talk about how difficult it is to get a debut novel published; no one ever talks about how difficult it is with a second. But it was really really difficult. Partly this was due to massive industry changes between the books: in addition to the GFC, E-books had become a thing, both of which threatened publishers’ profit margins, making them more risk-averse across the board, inclined to plump for dead-certs rather than little-known authors of literary fiction.
Despite these challenges, I had higher expectations the second time around: I wanted to be published by a larger publisher with stronger distributing networks and bigger marketing budgets. To this end I sought an agent which took two years of my life, and resulted only in a string of rejections. Then I sought a publisher which took a further year. It was a horrible process. I lost confidence in myself as a writer, in the industry, in my chance of ever making a go of this writing business.
But somehow, through all this I never lost my faith in the book. I kept sending it out, again and again, and this persistence eventually led to it being published by Fremantle Press, as well as being piked up by US publisher Sourcebooks, who will publish it stateside in April 2014. Yay!
Marketing
Perhaps the biggest difference between my first book and my second was the marketing. When A New Map of the Universe came out, authors weren’t expected to have a ‘platform’ - the term hadn’t been invented. My publisher set up a few interviews, and that was that. By the time Whisky Charlie Foxtrot came out, Facebook and Twitter had exploded, ‘blogging’ had become a buzzword, and authors had suddenly become responsible for their own marketing. I did a crash course in online marketing, reading a gazillion articles and setting up profiles for myself here, there and everywhere. Many writers complain about having to market their own work. And there is no doubt that it is time-consuming. But I find it empowering that there are so many things I can do, as an author, to help readers find my books.
In a few months, my third novel The Ark will be published, and that experience has been different again, but perhaps I’ll write about that in another post.
Want more? Read how other writers tackled their second books:
Dawn Barker found that compared to writing Fractured, Let Her Go 'gave me far more of those moments that I love while writing, moments where everything seems to just work, filling me with excitement and a conviction that this book could be good.'
Emma Chapman is currently completing an edit of her second novel; she reflects on how much more difficult it felt to find her protagonist’s voice this time around, but how, perhaps as a result of that struggle, she feels more connected to the character.
In Amanda Curtin's second novel Elemental, she had to learn 'how to structure a long novel covering a life of more than eighty years, how to pace past and present, immediacy and reflection, and how to create an unfamiliar world through memories not my own.'
For Sara Foster, her second novel Beneath the Shadows 'brought fresh experiments in plot, structure and narrative goals, and [she] found the experience of writing it as exhilarating and excruciating as every other book.'
Your turn: WRITERS - Are you in the process of writing a second novel? What challenges are you facing? READERS - have you ever been disappointed by a second novel, after loving a debut?
You might also like:
Journey to a Book: The Ark
6 Degrees of Separation: The Luminaries
