Blogging for Cathy -- Portia and Julian are my friends.

 My friend Cathy has promised to share occasional writing prompts/blogging ideas with me in an attempt to blog vicariously.  

Her recent question(s): 

What book(s) would you like to see a sequel, series, or see the series continue and why.   Is there a chance the author might write one?  Have you read fan fiction or other books that continue the series but not by the author?   Do you like them?  Would you want to write one?

I didn't promise her I had any instant answers or ideas to these specific questions but I do want to ponder them.  It's probably a good exercise to try to answer something that doesn't come instinctively.

A series I've enjoyed as a child and again as a parent is Gone-Away Lake and Return to Gone-Away, both by Elizabeth Enright.  They are just so lovely.  My daughter is six and I'm guessing that, between reading them on her own and being read to, she's gone through them at least 5 times each (though I'm a terrible estimator).  I believe they were first published in 1956 -- the year my mother was born -- surely not a coincidence.  The illustrations are by Joe and Beth Krush who seem to have illustrated quite a few children's books in that era.  Two main characters, cousins Portia and Julian, spending summer vacation together.  Sadly, Elizabeth Enright has died, so there will be no more stories from Gone-Away by the original author.  I often find spin-off books written by other-than-the-original authors disappointing.  But if I was going to choose an author to try for more Gone-Away  (which feels sort of like choosing what actor one would like to play Jamie Fraser) the first name who comes to mind is Jeanne Birdsall who has written two books about the Penderwick family.

{Thinking of you, Snozz} I was prepared to say that I can't imagine there is fan fic out there.  But with a minimum amount of searching I found a review (of Return to Gone-Away) on Amazon that ponders the age-old questions of how close the Villa Caprice (one of the houses surrounding Gone-Away Lake) was to the Four-Story Mistake (the house in the Melendy Quartet, also by Enright) and goes on to suggest some crossover fan fic.  There are just days when you have to love the world you live in, aren't there?  

I would be interested, in another year or so, to see what kind of spin-off stories my daughter would write about Portia, Julian, Foster, Uncle Pin and Aunt Minnehaha.

On the subject of fan fic in general, my only experience is with Harry Potter fan fic.  I read a lot of it for about 6 months or so and enjoyed it.    

Well, I feel like this is an incomplete assignment, but I think I'll stop for now.  How'd I do, Cathy?  :)