J.K. Rowling announced last week that she would not just be adapting her book Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, penning the scripts herself, but the book will be turned into a trilogy for Warner Bros. It's hard for me not to think of this as milking a franchise to death. The book Fantastic Beasts was already a ploy to milk more out of the Harry Potter franchise, which already gave us seven books, eight movies, and theme park. For an author who has already found success outside of the Harry Potter world, why else would she be wanting to jump back into that world after the last book came out close to eight years ago?
I guess the other side to this, however, is that, even though the book series has completed, there are new fans picking up the books each day. Because of the increasing fan base, there may be a new, or at least an increasing, demand to expand the Harry Potter universe.
This made me take a look at Mild Mannered.
When I originally came up with Mild Mannered, I envisioned it as four books. In my head, after the fourth book, the series would be done. That's it. No more. No prequel series. No sequel series. I would allow the characters (the ones who actually lived to see the end of the franchise) ride off in the sunset, and that would be it.
That was, until this past Sunday.
I woke up from a dream, when it hit me...
You see, when I started writing the first book, I had envisioned it to be a noir with superheroes. However, the books, while going pretty much exactly how I have wanted, did not have a noir edge. Which is fine, don't get me wrong. But, after waking up from this dream, I went straight to my laptop, and wrote the first chapter of what will be a book in a new series that, in its own way, furthers the universe of Mild Mannered without seeing too money hungry.
The book, tentatively titled Cape Town (no, it doesn't take place in South Africa), will be the first in a planned trilogy that takes place a little over a decade after the events of the fourth book in the Mild Mannered franchise. While I hope to retain the same feel of the original series when it comes to intensity and action, there will be several changes that will distinguish it from Mannered. It will be closer to a "superhero noir" feel than Mild Mannered, which means it will be a bit darker.
Also, I'll be doing away with the multiple narrator angle. It's a technique I've loved playing with in the Mild Mannered series (especially in the upcoming third installment I've been working on), but I just don't feel it will work for this new series. The lone narrator, named Noah Kinney, is a private investigator in a small (fictional) berg in Florida called Cape Royalton -- which, due to the increasing population of persons with powers, has been jokingly dubbed "Cape Town" (get it?). Noah, while not having any powers himself, finds himself often regretting the retainer he has with the local law enforcement, seeing that he often gets stuck with working cases involving PWPs, as he calls them.
Though I want to allow this new series to stand out on its own, there will be a few familiar faces that show up, at least in the first book. Since I don't want to give away anything, I won't tell you who shows up, but I can tell you it will be a lot of write.
However, I won't be focusing on these right away once the fourth book is complete. There are two books I've put off in lieu of wanting to complete the Mild Mannered series first -- my darkly comedic murder mystery The Consultant and my suspense novel Suicide Watch -- that I would like to finish (or rewrite, depending on how I feel about what I've written thus far) before I work on Cape Town. Plus, there is a fantasy trilogy I've had cooking for some time that I think would do better as books than they currently are in their screenplay format. Remember, I can't write action sequences in script form, so I know they'll be better off as books for now. So, once I finish The Consultant and Suicide Watch, I'll probably be alternating between the two trilogies.
I don't know if announcing it before the fact is considered a "sellout" move, or "milking it", but it's what's going to happen now. I can't fight destiny, nor would I want to at this point. This is going to be an awesome move for the Mild Mannered universe, and I couldn't be happier about it.
Stay tuned for all the awesome details!
