Atmosphere is both a stand-alone book and the first of a series. Ocean, my work in progress is a sequel, dependent upon the characters and events of Atmosphere.

Because of the complexity of both stories, I have struggled to find a way to remind those who read Atmosphere of the details and hopefully provide anyone who picks up Ocean without having read the first book the background to enjoy this one.

Too many series I have read spend ridiculous amounts of page space simply rehashing the previous story. As a reader, I find that method slows down the story for me.

The solution I have arrived at for Ocean is to put a brief excerpt from the personal journal of one of the Atmosphere characters at the beginning of select chapters. This gives me the opportunity to both give a look inside their heads during the ten year gap between the two books, and to recap without recapping the events of the first.