I’ve just begun work on a sequel to Amaranth, and although I won’t share too much about the actual story just yet, I can tell you how it came about. Originally, Amaranth was quite a different story; it was still based on a girl who committed suicide, but I had a completely different story planned for her than the one she ended up with. I had planned for Amaranth to have two very distinct parts, the first where Eva discovers her new existence and meets young Nicky and Elliot, the second would take place around ten years later when Nicky was eighteen and Elliot into his twenties. By the time I was halfway through the plan for what Amaranth eventually became, I realised I was never going to fit all of it into one book, especially since there are quite strict word limits for first-time authors as a rule. I’d also had real trouble with how to manage such a significant time jump without having to spend a long time describing what had happened in the interim and boring readers to sleep.

The best way I could think to tackle this problem was to further develop what I had in mind for Amaranth and split the whole idea into two books. But then the book took on a life of its own, and Timothy asserted himself into a main character in a way I hadn’t intended. He became key to the whole story and made it so that the second book could never really be about Eva.

The result is that though Book Two will essentially have the same plot I’d always intended, it won’t be a linear follow-on to Eva’s story. There will be new characters, and the ones we already met in Amaranth will have ten more years under their belts and will have changed in ways even I hadn’t anticipated.