This autumn, eight years after Douglas Adams died, Arthur Dent and friends will be hitching across the galaxy once again, Bram Stoker's Dracula will be stalking the pages of a book for the first time in more than a century, and Winnie the Pooh will be returning to the Hundred Acre Wood in the first official sequel to AA Milne's much-loved children's books. Such continuations of the work of popular authors, who have inconveniently interrupted their output by dying, are big business for the literary world these days. Authors are being roped in left, right and centre to continue or complete legacies, whether it's Sebastian Faulks taking on James Bond in Devil May Care last year, or the bucketloads of Virginia Andrews novels she has "written" since her death more than 20 years ago.
Dacre Stoker, the great grand-nephew of Bram, has co-written a follow-up to the classic adventures of Van Helsing and his vampire hunters. Published on 24 September, Dracula: The Un-Dead is set a quarter of a century after Dracula's apparent death in the original, and follows the story of Quincey, son of Stoker's hero, Jonathan. Writing it with Ian Holt, a Dracula historian, has been "extremely daunting", says Stoker. "I am like the new player replacing the star athlete who retired from the team. I am not Bram, and can only hope to be accepted for what I do." Eoin Colfer is similarly worried, saying when the news about his sequel to Hitchhiker, And Another Thing ... was announced that "I feel more pressure to perform now than I ever have with my own books, and that is why I am bloody determined that this will be the best thing I have ever written".
Bestselling chick-lit author Tilly Bagshawe knows how he feels. Picked to write a follow-up to king of the blockbuster Sidney Sheldon's million-selling 1980s family saga, Master of the Game, she "did not want to be the person who wrote a 'bad' Sidney Sheldon book".
"This was a man whom I admired hugely, and who spent his life building an incredible reputation and fan base," says Bagshawe. "Also, his widow and family are lovely people who have been incredibly kind and supportive and trusting of me, so I took that responsibility very seriously. I must admit I have felt very emotionally involved with this book from the beginning, far more so than with my own books where it was only my own name at stake."
Bagshawe has clearly had a lot of fun with Mistress of the Game, which was published in August, upping the melodrama and rolling out the villains in a Sheldon-esque manner. "Dead mothers and estranged fathers: two of the key ingredients for psychopathic behaviour. This was the stuff from which serial killers, rapists and suicide bombers were made," she writes near the start, setting the scene for future troubles. And then later, arch-villainess Eve, pregnant, suffering from morning sickness, reveals that her "violent bouts of vomiting were triggered by pure revulsion. The very idea of Keith's seed growing inside her was enough to make her retch." It's all like this: over-the-top, larger than life, technicolour – tons of fun.
With her storyline following the next generation of characters from Master of the Game, Bagshawe says she's altered her writing completely to hit the right note. "Sidney's voice was unique and quite different from mine. Luckily it was also very distinctive, the short paragraphs, the dialogue just 'dropped' onto the page with very little set up or description, and of course the twists like a series of punches: boom boom boom," she says, adding that she consulted with Alexandra Sheldon, Sidney's widow, about his editing and writing process. "She saw the manuscript and suggested some changes, all of which I incorporated into the final book. It was actually great to have someone who could say, 'you know, Sidney would not have said such and such, he would have used this or that word instead'."
It's the same story for Brandon Sanderson, a fantasy author who was called out of the blue by the widow and editor of the late Robert Jordan, creator of the bestselling Wheel of Time books, to complete his series when Jordan died in 2007. A Memory of Light, the first in the trilogy Sanderson is writing to bring the saga to its conclusion, is out this October, and he's nervously awaiting the verdict from the legions of obsessive Jordan fans desperate to find out how it concludes.
"Another writer told me they would have turned down the project, because anything you do right, they'll say it's because Robert Jordan left behind great notes, and anything you do wrong, it's that Brandon Sanderson guy screwing up, so you can't win. I say that I win because I get to be part of this," he says. "There are going to be people who don't like this book. I would hope they'll be a minority but I have had to stop reading blogs and forums."
He's wise to stay away: while the majority of coverage is positive, there are some angry fanboys out there; "Having Brandon come in and finish this epic is like having an ogier from Stedding Shangtai come in and finish Loial's book about Rand," says one commentator (somewhat obliquely if you haven't read the books, but it's not particularly complimentary). Colfer is going through a similar mill: when it was announced a year ago that he'd been asked by Adams's widow to write a sixth book in the Hitchhiker's Guide "trilogy", much grumpiness broke out online. "I hope this Colfer guy doesn't completely ruin the books," said one poster. "Screw Colfer. How about we write our own version of Book Six," said another.
With And Another Thing … not out until October, and nothing as yet given away about its contents, Colfer has yet to face the wrath or pleasure of fans who've actually read the novel: Bagshawe has already done so, and feedback to Mistress of the Game is so far somewhat mixed, with Amazon reviews ranging from five stars and "true to Sheldon's spirit", to one star, and "very let down". You mess with other writers' inventions, it seems, at your peril.
Unlike Bagshawe, Sanderson says he hasn't entirely altered his writing style to mimic Jordan's. Left with an ending and "a lot of notes", he says his job has been "part archaeologist". "I was given this mass of things to sift through – concepts, ideas, scenes he'd been working on. Sometimes he'd come up with a scene, and then say, 'actually, I'll do it this way'. I needed to read through it all, and think which will really work for the story," he says. "In the end, I couldn't say at every point what would Jordan do – I didn't know him, I knew his fiction, and I had to think what the story demanded. Instead of imitating Robert Jordan, my job has been to write what's appropriate for the Wheel of Time. It's the same actors, the same script, but a different director."
He's expended a great deal of effort on making sure his characters' voices sound right, and has certainly adapted his style, but says that a full-blown impersonation of Jordan – who is "more descriptive, especially when it comes to setting and details" – "would have come across as parody". Holt and Stoker – who hadn't written a book before Dracula: The Un-Dead – took the decision not to mimic Stoker's writing at all, modernising the language in their Dracula sequel, and staying away from the "journal style" of the original novel. "A journal would have been a bit complicated for us, since people do die in our story, and it would be difficult for them to make journal entries once dead," says Stoker. "I had to reprogramme myself to be able to think and write in a much more descriptive manner. Ian and I took turns at storylines and then would merge them together. We would also alternate chapters when we got into a similar mode of writing, and began to know where it was all headed. Then, the key was plenty of good editors to sort out the messes we sometimes created."
They also had access to Bram Stoker's handwritten notes, and have included in the story characters and plot threads from the original manuscript. Consultation with the Stoker family was a big part of pulling the book together: Stoker's descendants have not been involved "with anything Dracula" in the US since the 1931 Bela Lugosi film, which Bram's widow Florence approved. "I was determined the finished product would be something they would be proud of," says Stoker. "I had often thought about what happened so long ago, which caused the copyright to Dracula to be lost, the effects on the Stoker family, and wondered if there was a way for the family to regain some control over Dracula. Writing the sequel was an offshoot of that thinking, and may indeed help my family regain some influence over Bram's literary legacy."
As well as Stoker doing Stoker, Colfer taking on Adams and Sanderson tackling Jordan, this autumn also sees David Benedictus's Return to the Hundred Acre Wood, which picks up from the end of AA Milne's The House at Pooh Corner, and a sequel to Frances Hodgson Burnett's The Little Princess, Wishing for Tomorrow by Hilary McKay. With the hunt currently on to find a co-writer to finish the late Michael Crichton's final novel – a techno-thriller of which he had written a third before he died in November – and plans in place for the estate of Arthur Conan Doyle to launch a new series of books about the young Sherlock Holmes next spring, the trend shows no sign of slowing down. Sanderson, for one, is keen that it doesn't end in exploitation of authors' legacies. "There is a point when you do need to let go of it … when you have to say no, this would make him uncomfortable, we're taking his legacy and turning it into the McDonalds of books," he says. "But are we going to be able to give up the ring, Frodo?"
