Clement Kent asked Maureen F. McHugh:

Just read Nekropolis - very fine. In the acknowledgments you thank "Sandy Dijkstra who made me write two books when I only wanted to commit to one." Hoping that meant there was a sequel to Nekropolis I went looking on the interent...but nay, sorrow and dismay! So other than Nekropolis, what was the other book Sandy Dijkstra persuaded you to write?

Maureen F. McHugh Clement! Thanks for asking! Sandy is my agent. I had written Mission Child, and when she went to sell it, she asked me to write a couple of sentences about what I was writing next. A lot of book contracts have a ‘first look’ clause that says whatever your next book is, the publisher gets to see it before anyone else. I thought she was going to use the idea of my ‘next book’ to help sell Mission Child.

I had a vague idea to write Nekropolis. So I wrote a couple of sentences. Sandy didn’t use it to make the ‘first look’ option sweeter, she convinced them to buy both books. Which was cool! Two books! And scary! Because Nekropolis wasn’t even written!

So the other book was Mission Child. Not a sequel, sadly.

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