Read or Dead

I'm not a great fan of literary sequels. But at least they're so much better than the sequel penned by a different writer after the original author's death. That really is a ghastly idea.

Here's a challenge: can you think of any book that's a follow-up to a dead author's work which compares favourably with the original novel. I bet you'll struggle.

There are a whole host of 'Sherlock Holmes' and 'James Bond' books written long after their original author had passed and while many are readable and some highly enjoyable they don't hold a candle to the brilliance of the original creations. The same with the many authors who have tried to follow in H.P. Lovecraft's sick and twisted footsteps.

I might make an exception for Andrew Neiderman writing as "The New Virginia Andrews" but again, nothing that he's produced is of the level of her classic 'Flowers in the Attic'. And Eoin Colfer is an excellent writer. I love his Artemis Fowl series and his later, more adult-oriented works, 'Screwed' and 'Plugged', but can anyone really offer an argument in support of 'And Another Thing', his addition to the 'Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy' series? If ever there was a redundant addition to a classic series surely this was it?

This blog and it's predecessor from last week can really be summed up as a plea to writers young and old to strive for original ideas, to shy away from the lure of an already-established readership in favour of pushing new boundaries and mining for new storylines and characters.

Of course there are no new ideas in the universe but is it too much for obviously talented writers to hang the old ideas onto new frameworks with new characters and new situations to flesh them out? Are there no new sleuths in the world? Is it really more important to write more 'Sherlock' stories? And P.D. James is supremely talented, so why on Earth did she have to create the Jane Austen pastiche, 'Death Comes to Pemberley'?

I better quit before I descend into Full Rant Mode. So it's time to wrap up, for time is something I have little of at the moment. I have a huge writing project that I'm in the middle of.

It's a sequel to my novel, 'The Happiest Workplace On Earth'. Well I have to pay the bills like everyone else.

© Shaun Finnie 2014