Sequels, Literary Festivals and Natasha O’Farrell’s heavenly handbag

There have been some heart-warming reactions to The Dance of Love and several people have suggested I write a sequel, possibly set in the Depression and the lead-up to the Second World War because, they said, it would be fascinating to find out what happens next in the characters’ lives and how they do or don’t live with the things they decided (or didn’t decide) to do by the end of the novel. I’m delighted to discover that the characters lived convincingly enough in readers’ minds to make more about them and their lives happily anticipated and – although I’m at work on my third, very different, novel – I’m quite taken by the idea. But if I do write a Dance of Love sequel (perhaps to be called, as suggested by one sequel-desirer: The Dance of Life) I’ll bear in mind the following comment from this article about sequels, from an August 2014 piece in the Guardian (which included the news that Audrey Niffenegger is writing a sequel to The Time Traveller’s Wife):

I think that well-written books, especially those with uncertain endings, are best left well alone. Re-visiting is always a bad idea … like meeting up with ex-partners; it never turns out as well as you hoped it might.

Hmmmm … .

And just recently, while researching literary festivals in the UK, I discovered a wonderful website that lists all the literary festivals in these islands. It also hosts writers’ pages: mine is here.

And the thing I’d love to have made this month, in a parallel universe where time is infinite and all things are possible, is this heavenly handbag: