I got a scary e-mail in my inbox this morning. Good mail with an intriguing possibility but scary nontheless…

The publisher of Pirates and Swashbucklers wants to do a sequel, another collection of pirate themed short stories. All the authors of the previous volume are being invited to submit proposals for stories they want to write for it. Sequels to the stories in the first volume are welcomed, as are new ideas.

Of course, my brain was immediately clamouring for my attention with several hundred ideas for what I could write for this. Some of them better than others. Some of them downright dire and some possibly a little too close to plagiarism to be comfortable (a version of the Usual Suspects set in a pirate milieu, for example…). The problem is: how can you decide which one? And how can you tell if what you are about to write is going to be great?

I suppose everyone has sequel fear. How can you follow that which has gone before? if you feel like commenting, why not talk about your favourite sequel or how you managed to overcome sequel fear…

As for me, I need to get back to deciding which of the hundreds of ideas I have floating around my head…