There was only one problem. I wanted to write a sequel. Even while I was writing Life As We Knew It, I wanted to know what happened next. But Kathy said Harcourt had no interest in a sequel.
There are moments in my life when I’m really smart, and this was one of them. Instead of taking no for an answer, I said, “How about if I write a book about the exact same situation only with a completely different set of characters?”
“Fine,” Kathy said. “Because that’s not a sequel.”
What I didn’t tell Kathy was my intention to write that second book and then a third one, where Miranda from Life As We Knew It would meet the characters from what became The Dead & The Gone. Because I knew someday the people at Harcourt would come to their senses and say, “Of course we want a sequel, only now we want one for both books.”
The Dead & The Gone was more challenging to write. Miranda isn’t exactly like me (for one thing she swims, a skill I’ve never quite developed), but Alex is nothing at all like me. I loved him and his sisters and his friends, and I loved ending the world all over again, but it wasn’t the joyous experience Life As We Knew It had been. On the other hand, I took more pride in it, because it was that much harder to write, so it all balanced out.
The Dead & The Gone was published and I began hectoring Kathy about writing a third book. Mostly she said no, but sometimes she said maybe. I wrote a third book on my own that had very little to do with the first two, but I realized before showing it to her that it was a mistake. So I kept asking and waiting, and eventually Kathy said yes, and we had a long phone conversation where we decided on a plot that had absolutely nothing to do with Miranda and Alex.
Only then she called me back and said, “What we really want is a sequel.”
So I finally got to introduce Alex to Miranda. I wrote This World We Live In, bringing together the characters from the first two books. It was back to Miranda’s diary, and I got the answers to some of the questions I’d been asked by readers. And when Kathy left Harcourt and I began working with Karen Grove, I found my book in the hands of another excellent editor.
I was a happy writer. I’d written a trilogy, a very high-class thing to do. Life was good.
But people kept writing to ask me if there was going to be a fourth book. And then I took my cat in for his annual checkup, and my vet asked if there was going to be a fourth book.
So I contacted Karen and said, “My vet wants to know if there’s going to be a fourth book. What should I tell him?”
And Karen said, “Do it.”
So I did. I wrote an entire fourth book and sent it off to Karen. She read it. Everyone at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt read it. And although they never actually said so, they hated it.
That should have stopped me. But I loved my characters and I loved the world I’d created and I wanted to make my vet happy. I tried again, and ended up writing the book you’re holding in some format or another at this very moment, The Shade of the Moon.
My vet has since retired, so he probably won’t be asking me if there’s going to be a fifth book. And since I’m writing this before The Shade of the Moon is published, I don’t know if anyone is going to ask me that. Frankly, I don’t even know what I’d want the answer to be, should I ever be asked.
But I do know that watching an old movie on a Saturday afternoon changed my life in a thousand different wonderful ways.
Visit www.hmhbooks.com to find all of the books in the Life As We Knew It series.
Life as We Knew It
When Miranda first hears the warnings that a meteor is headed on a collision path with the moon, they just sound like an excuse for extra homework assignments. But her disbelief turns to fear in a split second as the entire world witnesses a lunar impact that catastrophically alters the earth’s climate—and results in mass devastation.
Told in Miranda’s diary entries, this is a heart-pounding account of her struggle to hold on to the most important resource of all—hope—in an increasingly desperate and unfamiliar time.
*“Each page is filled with events both wearying and terrifying and infused with honest emotions.” —Booklist, starred review
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The Dead & The Gone
Alex Morales was working behind the counter at Joey’s Pizza when life as he knew it changed forever. He was worried about getting elected as senior class president and making the grades to land him in a good college. He never expected an asteroid would hit the moon. He never expected to be fighting just to stay alive.
*“The powerful images and wrenching tragedies will haunt readers.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review
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This World We Live In
It’s been a year since a meteor collided with the moon. For Miranda Evans, life as she knew it no longer exists. Her friends and neighbors are dead, the landscape is frozen, and food is increasingly scarce.
The struggle to survive intensifies when Miranda’s father and stepmother arrive with a baby and three strangers in tow. One of the newcomers is Alex Morales, and as Miranda’s complicated feelings for him turn to love, his plans for the future thwart their relationship. Then a devastating tornado hits the town of Howell, and Miranda makes a decision that will change their lives forever.
*“Readers will be moved by displays of compassion, strength, and faith as characters endure grim realities and face an uncertain future.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review
Visit www.hmhbooks.com or your favorite retailer to purchase the book in its entirety.
About the Author
SUSAN BETH PFEFFER’s Life As We Knew It series has received numerous awards and is widely praised by reviewers as action-packed, thrilling, and utterly terrifying. In The Shade of the Moon, characters from the previous books come together in a world where survival is of utmost concern, and new rules for society are established as people grapple with limited resources and food supplies after mass devastation. Ms. Pfeffer lives in Middletown, New York.
Susan Beth Pfeffer, Last Survivors 04: Shade of the Moon
(Series: # )
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