Photo Credit: Boiarkina Marina

It’s an otherworldly experience, what happens to creative writers when they fall in love with bits and pieces of storylines and characters crowding their heads. They are teased by their own minds into discovering what’s there, summoning up old memories, old feelings and fantasies of bravery, evil machinations, breathtaking adventures – you get the picture.

I’ve been caught up in one story over the last year, test driving it in various ways. And while the mind volume on that one is loud, at the same time a separate series of trickling questions have whispered their way to the surface of my consciousness.

Should I, could I, would I write a second novel, a sequel to THE JUICE? That book is a cyberpunk, dystopian novel about futuristic media companies. One of the main characters is a kind of psychedelic Cinderella, who starts out life as an impoverished country girl and ends up taking a certain drug that transforms her into a captivating, goddess-like presence whose powers of persuasion are so strong, hardly anyone can resist doing what she tells them to. You know, like most of us, right?

The novel hasn’t rocked the best-seller charts. I’m not putting on any airs here. Heck, with over 1,000 books published every day, I’m not looking for miracles. But over 50 reviews on Amazon have put me at an average 4.9 out of a possible 5 stars.

As I looked over the reviews the other day, I was stopped by review No. 52:

“THE JUICE is an espionage roller coaster ride, a political drama and a powerful, deeply moving romance … Once you have read THE JUICE you will wait, with bated breath, for Janet Stilson’s next book. Brava!”

Those thoughts, from a perfect stranger, really moved me, as so many other reviews have moved me in the last few months since THE JUICE’s release. Somehow, this one has pushed me over the cliff. I’m not just saying I’m going to write another novel. I am doing it. In the prep stage, studying the storyline options for each character, each new innerving thriller plot twist and the emergence of different provocateurs.

Get ready, get set, because here I plunge into a mysterious, fun-splashed and occasionally treacherous ocean, swimming my way toward a brand new novel.