Writers On The Move: Writing the Second Book: Is it Easier?: Ten years ago, if someone had told me I would have two books published by now, I would’ve laughed—longingly of course. My first novel, Cowgirl Dreams, was released in December 2008, almost ten years after I started writing it. The sequel, Follow the Dream, came out two years later.
People say to me, “The second book must be a lot easier than the first one, right?”
Well, yes and no. I guess I could say that I cheated, in a way. I wrote the two books as one long book to begin with. But when I began researching publishers, I found that the word count for the “western” genre was generally shorter. It just happened that I found a place in about the middle where I thought it could be easily divided. But then I had to make sure the second book could stand alone and fill in some of the back story without resorting to the old “telling” versus “showing.”
Read more here http://www.writersonthemove.com/2011/10/writing-second-book-is-it-easier.html
Natasha Yim is a children's book author and freelance writer. Her first book, Otto's Rainy Day was published by Charlesbridge Publishing in 2000. It was selected as a Kids' Pick of the Lists. She has written for Highlights for Children, Appleseeds and Faces magazines, and her new picture book biography, Cixi, The Dragon Empress was released by Goosebottom Books in October 2011. Gretchen Maurer's writing has been published in Frances Mayes' The Discovery of Poetry, and in Adventure Cyclist and Highlights for Children magazines. She also co-wrote a short film, Alma, that has won multiple awards. Mary Tudor, "Bloody Mary" is her first picture book. She lives in Northern California with her family. Natasha Yim’s current book, Cixi, The Dragon Empress and Gretchen Maurer’s current book, Mary Tudor, “Bloody Mary” are two of the six books (all written by different authors) in Goosebottom Books’ series, The Thinking Girl’s Treasury of Dastardly Dames. The seri...