Last time I guest blogged for the Jaunties I talked about adapting historical romance novels into teen stories (and had a blast doing it, by the way). This time, since I’m here to celebrate the release of my second book, Goddess Boot Camp, I want to talk about the story after the story.

When I wrote Oh. My. Gods. (my—squee!—double-RITA-nominated first book) I was coming right out of the romance tradition. I grew up in RWA, so to speak. Oh. My. Gods. told the story of Phoebe Castro adjusting to her new life in Greece among the descendants of the Greek gods and a big part of that adjusting was snagging her own personal Greek god, Griffin. The girl got the boy. End of story, right? It was … until my editor asked for a sequel.

My first thought was, But Phoebe’s story is finished. She and Griffin are happily ever after. What else is there to say?

Apparently, a lot.

I’m a big fan of epilogues. I love to see little snippets of the hero and heroine’s lives after the story finishes. Partly because I want to see whether their relationship is going strong in the future and partly because I like getting one more peek at the characters I’ve fallen in love with. Writing a sequel is kind of like writing a book-length epilogue. Only with conflict and tension and things maybe not going as smoothly as you’d hope.

In the Oh. My. Gods. extended epilogue (aka Goddess Boot Camp), Phoebe and Griffin have some rocky romance hurdles to get through—like him spending a little too much time with his descendant-of-Aphrodite-head-cheerleader ex-girlfriend.

To make matters worse, Phoebe his having trouble (warning: Oh. My. Gods. spoiler) managing the godly superpowers that go along with learning that she’s a descendant of the goddess Nike. Her stepdad enrolls her in a summer training program so she can get control before the gods themselves decide to smote her for accidental misuse of powers. And that program just happens to be populated by ten-year-old girls, Phoebe’s evil harpy of a stepsister, and the aforementioned descendant-of-Aphrodite-head-cheerleader ex-girlfriend.

Throw in anonymous messages hinting at a mystery surrounding the death of Phoebe’s dad and trying to train for the Pythian Games, and suddenly Phoebe has a pretty tough summer ahead of her.

Clearly Phoebe’s story didn’t really end on the last page of Oh. My. Gods. The fact that so much could still happen after the happily ever after got me wondering about other literary happy endings. Is it really likely that Lizzie and Mr. Darcy, after despising each other for most of Pride and Prejudice, would really be on a life-long honeymoon after the wedding? Or will there still be moments when he acts like an arrogant jerk and she totally calls him on it? Probably.

And, admit it, you’d love to peek through the drapes as it happened.

What other literary happy endings do you think might be just the beginning? Share your idea of a juice after-story and one lucky commenter will get a copy of both the prologue (Oh. My. Gods.) and epilogue (Goddess Boot Camp) in this series.