Why Book #2?

​After I wrote Bullets, Blood and Stones: the journey of a child soldier, one of my editors kindly hinted that I shouldn’t do the typical turn-it-into-a-series kind of thing. “Stop right where you are, Donna,” he said, “It’s good where it ends.”
And I kind of believed him. As a first time writer I found the whole process of writing, editing and re-writing again and again, well, a little bit exhausting. It would be nice to take a break from the keyboard, stop and smell the flowers so to speak. But I couldn’t. I knew Charlie’s story didn’t end there. As much as I would like to leave the reader with that wonderful image of Charlie dancing in the rain, I couldn’t let them think that that was all there was to it: a child soldier escapes and all is well. Because it isn’t.
When I returned to Uganda I learned about the ajiji. Flashbacks that haunted these former child soldiers both day and night. And I realized, although Charlie’s body may be free when he escapes, his mind isn’t.
That’s why the story couldn’t end there.
So, my readers, the second book in the Stones Trilogy: Arrows, Bones and Stones: the shadow of a child soldier, exposes you to a different kind of battle. An internal struggle that, although someone on the outside looking in cannot see, it is still very real. It’s an intense struggle that I hope I have shed some light on so we can be more empathetic to those boys and girls, men and women, who struggle to regain their stolen childhoods everyday.