I’m happy to welcome author Brenda Marie Smith. Today, Brenda shares an interesting post about sequels and her new release, If the Light Escapes.

After I’d written If Darkness Takes Us and was querying it to agents and publishers, it was time for me to start a new novel. I considered several story ideas, but the only one that captured me was a sequel to If Darkness.

“Don’t do it!” more experienced writers told me. “Never write a sequel to a book that hasn’t been sold yet. Publishers don’t like it.”

But I had this compelling world I’d created, and a cast of characters I had carefully crafted until, to me, they had lives of their own. I couldn’t just abandon them. They’d be hanging there in stasis waiting for me to return and breathe more life into them.

I know this isn’t actually the case, but that’s how…