Writing Sequels – it’s weird.

So today I resumed work on the novella draft that was once laboured with the working title The Girl Who Loathed Cats* but now has the working title Claw** and is probably better known as the follow-up to Horn which pits our protagonist against a talking cat and evil foetii***. 

This novella is, officially, the weirdest thing to work on as far as process goes  – I’ve never really written a story that follows-up on a character or world I’ve already written, and it seems to involve a lot of time sitting around and wandering what makes a re-appearance and what doesn’t (There’s also a lot of time spent trying to reconcile how the world works, since Horn is all fairies & unicorns while a large chunk of this plot is driven by a magic cat and a deranged fan-boy/scientist). The nice part is that the process is going to be pretty leisurely – I’ve made a self-imposed deadline of March 31st to get this draft done, which means that I’ve currently got to write less than 500 words a day to get it finished. Of course, given that 500 words a day are about all I’m good for with all the other stuff going on at the moment, there’s still a great deal of potential for things to go awry 🙂

*because apparently novellas are where I unleash the lamest of titles under the pretense of a homage to Raymond Chandler.
** because, well, it’s less slightly lame and fits a little better with Horn. And it’s a better option than the second choice at this point – Foetus.
*** this was done after thesis work, during the part of the day spent lazing about and cursing the heat.