Unwritten Sequels and Spin-Offs

Since genre fiction loves series, and since I love looking at things from more than one angle, I usually have more novels planned in any setting I create. Most of them never get written. In fact, most of them never get beyond the “rough outline” stage. Here are some of the stories I thought of but never told in all my various published series (including some you may have thought were one-shots) — all their titles are provisional, of course:

The Lords of Dus: Four published volumes telling one complete story, but I also planned (but never wrote) a spin-off, A Handful of Gold, and a sequel, Skelleth.

War Surplus: Two novels, but I planned a third, The Exile and the Empire. I also plotted (admittedly not in much detail) a couple of novels about other IRU cyborgs: Werewolf and Defender.

The Obsidian Chronicles: A trilogy. I’ve had several fans ask me for a sequel, but I have never planned one and don’t ever intend to. I did, however, plot a prequel, Lord Dragon, set centuries earlier, about how Enziet became what he was.

Annals of the Chosen: Another trilogy with no sequels planned. The series as published, though, is missing a piece; it was originally planned as either four or five novels. I cut out one of them entirely. Untrue Names (I later cannibalized the title and central concept for a not-yet-written volume in a different series) would have come between The Wizard Lord and The Ninth Talisman.

Ethshar: Thirteen novels and a short story collection so far, but I have an entire separate page about other planned stories in the series. That page, unfortunately, is incomplete and out of date.

Worlds of Shadow: Another trilogy. I don’t remember plotting any sequels or spin-offs.

The Bound Lands/Fall of the Sorcerers: Only two published, but many were planned, right from the start. The two that were published, A Young Man Without Magic and Above His Proper Station, were supposed to be followed by On A Field Sable. After that the order wasn’t set, but there’s Swordsmen of the Fallen Empire, Untrue Names, Assassin in Waiting, The Prince’s Return, The Siege of Vair, and several more. (All of these are set in the Bound Lands. Not all of them are part of the Fall of the Sorcerers.)

Gregory Kraft: Only one novel so far, One-Eyed Jack, but I plotted two more: Suicide King and Queen of Hearts.

Ragbaan: Again, only one so far, Vika’s Avenger, but two sequels are planned: One-Ninth of Catastrophe and A Sea of Slaves.

Carlisle Hsing: There are two novels about her, but I also plotted two different versions of a third one with the working title The End of the Night.

Shining Steel appears to be a one-shot, but (a) it’s actually set in the same universe as Denner’s Wreck/Among the Powers and the Carlisle Hsing stories, and (b) I did plot a sequel, Silver Stars, that I never wrote.

I never plotted a sequel to Denner’s Wreck/Among the Powers, but it actually was a sequel to a much earlier novel I never finished, Rise and Fall of the Second Imperium.

While I had hoped to write more horror, The Nightmare People never had any sequels, prequels, or spin-offs planned, so far as I can recall. Neither did The Rebirth of Wonder, or The Chromosomal Code.

The Final Folly of Captain Dancy” was supposed to have sequels, but I decided against writing them because they were too dependent on the first story. The working titles were The Further Adventures of Bartholomew Sanchez, The Triumphant Return of John Hastings Abernathy, and My Days with the Caliburn Witch. Tor asked me about prequels about Jack Dancy, but I never came up with any plots that satisfied me.

Esther and I did plot a sequel to Split Heirs, to be called Putting On Heirs, but Tor wasn’t interested, so we never wrote it.

I could never figure out a decent sequel to Touched By the Gods, but I did come up with an idea for a prequel, Rubrekir the Destroyer.

I’m not going to get into series where nothing’s published yet, or where only short stories have seen print; maybe in another post.

Did I miss anything?

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