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Episode Transcript (by TK @_torkz)

[Upbeat Ukulele Intro Music]This is We Make Books, a podcast about writing publishing and everything in between. Rekka is a published Science Fiction and Fantasy author, and Kaelyn is a professional genre fiction editor. Together, they'll tackle the things you never knew you never knew about getting a book from concept to finished product, with explanations, examples, and a lot of laughter. Get your moleskin notebook ready. It's time for We Make Books.

Kaelyn: Did you get your second shot yet?

 

Rekka: We get it on Saturday.

 

K [mumbling]: Okay.

 

R: ‘Cause cool people get the vaccination.

 

K: You hear that kids? Be cool, get vaccinated.

 

R: Be Extremely cool. Be cool like me. [laughing] I don't know if that’s selling it but-

 

K: [laughing] 

 

R: -that’s what i’m gonna go with.

 

K: I get mine May second. I got the moderna one so I had to wait four weeks and -

 

R: Mhm. Yeah, I get two weeks between mine [loudly] it depends on your publisher.

 

K: [laughing] 

 

K: Speaking of things that come in part two-

 

R: Yep, speaking of duologies-

 

K: The covid duology, oh there we go.

 

R [overlapping]: Yes, well the vaccine duology, not the covid itself-

 

K [overlapping]: Yeah.

 

R: Because you don't wanna get covid and then long covid, that’s one duology. The duology I’m all about is the mRNA duology, let’s do that one.

 

K: We’ve got shots part two coming up here.

 

R: Mhm.

 

K: And you know, in many ways the vaccine is kind of similar to a duology. The first one’s the build up, the first one’s to get you a little bit of a taste there, get your immune system going like “hey, what is this? What's going on? What's happening?” and then the second one, that’s BAM, you know? like-

 

R: That’s when it all happens

 

K: - fully immune. Yeah and that’s [laughing] that’s why everyone’s getting sick from the second one.

 

R: Ugh yeah, I don’t think this metaphor’s gonna last us too much longer. But, we are talking today about duologies.

 

K: As promised.

 

R: Yes, we are following through on the promise, the commitment we made, to follow last episode’s trilogy discussion with a discussion of duologies, and why they are harder than the thing we made sound really hard.

 

K: Yeah, so. You know, last episode we talked about trilogies, and how trilogies can be really challenging, and one of the things we touched on was: if you’re really having a hard time with this, maybe you don’t have a trilogy. Maybe you have a duology. So, a duology, obviously, is a series of two books rather than a trilogy being three, although quadrilogies are becoming a thing now. Four books is getting super common. So, just to clarify some things here. If you’re going “I did not hear the word duology ever, until about a year ago, or so,” you’re right, you didn’t. [laughing] This wasn’t really a very common thing. 

 

R: This wasn’t a thing, there was a book and a sequel but there wasn't a thing called a duology.

 

K: Yeah and by the way, let’s clarify this real quickly here, the difference between a book and a sequel, and a duology. A duology is a story split up into two books. A book and a sequel is, presumably, one complete story and then another complete story.

 

R: In the same world, usually featuring the same characters, spun off somehow.

 

K: Yes.

 

K: Contractual finite book series are kind of a relatively recent thing. You know, for those of you who have been reading science fiction and fantasy for a long time - especially, you know, when it first started, you know, the trade paperbacks and the pulp and everything was really popular - w