A little advice

[Athosmr]

I posted something about this in the Newbie section, but thought it should be done here instead. I have a dilemna.
My book, "Terror Vacation" is almost set to be published (needs some minor revisions due to overuse of commas), but it's technically the 4th book of a series I started as scripts in 1978. "Motive for Murder", "Stealing the Night Away" & "Amanda" all came first. The series is a young adult series about 2 detectives named Henry & Mike. "Motive" takes place when they're 16, and "Terror" takes place following their high school graduation. I've started the conversion of the first 3 scripts to book form (1 book instead of 3) and have also started on the sequel to "Terror" called "Winter Wedding". My question is, should I wait on publishing "Terror Vacation" & finish the first book, or submit "Terror" and using the first book as a prequel?

[Cath]

The real question is does the book stand alone? If so, I'd be tempted to go ahead with this one and work on the others as prequels (or rework them as sequels).

[Elektra]

What does the contract with your publisher say? You may not have a choice in the matter anymore.

[James D. Macdonald]

Have you talked with your editor and your agent about this? What do they say?

[Siddow]

If I'm reading this correctly (and after reading your post on Newbies), you haven't actually submitted for publication yet, right?

So you're kind of cart-before-the-horse. When the book is finished, do you plan on self-publishing or going traditional? Self-pub, it's pretty much your call. Pubbing a prequel later? No problem! But if you're going traditional, this should be something to discuss with your agent and editor. Perhaps (hope not) the book won't do well, and they won't be interested in ANY more Henry & Mike books.

But you pretty much can't do anything until you've finished the book. And I have the opposite problem; I'm commaphobic. But I loves me some semi-colons.