Faces of CHANCE: The Sequels

In 2015 I wrote Another Chance, a spin-off of the Chances Are books.  It focused on a conman named Vince who's turned into an Indian woman named Vinaya with the drug that turned Steve into Stacey in the first book.  At the end, Vinaya is recruited to join an agency known as CHANCE to fight evil.  CHANCE was supposed to be kind of like SHIELD in the Marvel universe or whatever.

For whatever reason I never got around to writing any sequels.  Maybe because while the book sold some copies (and I gave away a bunch more) no one ever reviewed it.  No one!  It seems statistically impossible, but the closest I got is a couple of ratings on Goodreads.  It certainly didn't make me feel like I needed to scramble to write anything.

At one point I did rough out some sequels.  The first one would have Vinaya getting pregnant.  For lack of anything better I call it Fat Chance.  I mean, Pregnant Chance would sound weird.  Expecting Chance?  A New Chance?  Yet Another Chance?  Whatever.  Here's my rough description:

It’s six months after Vinaya joined CHANCE. She and Simon haven’t married yet but she’s a few months pregnant. Thanks to the nanobots, she hardly has any symptoms at all. So she can still go on dangerous missions—or at least she thinks so. But when taking down a former CHANCE operative things go sour and Vinaya is nearly killed. Simon and their boss force her to stand down until after the baby is born.

After a couple of months, though, that former operative she was after returns and badly injures Simon. Vinaya refuses to stand by and wants to get revenge. Their computer hacker turns up a lead to the former operative: he has a daughter in high school. So with some help, Vinaya goes undercover as a high school senior—a pregnant high school senior.

She does what she can about hiding the pregnancy while seeking out the operative’s daughter. They start to get buddy-buddy and Vinaya realizes the girl has no idea what her father really does. It makes her wonder what she will have to tell her child when the kid gets old enough. Maybe she will have to stop all this and work behind a desk or something less dangerous.

Eventually she has to tell the girl her secret to try and find her father. The girl isn’t happy with her but she gives in eventually. Except when a team moves in on where the guy is supposed to be, it’s a trap! The former drill sergeant is injured but not killed.

Meanwhile, the father comes for his daughter. Vinaya tries to stop him, but she can’t. She manages to track them down and finally gets the guy to turn himself over to the authorities and let his daughter go free.

As the father is being taken into custody, Vinaya’s water breaks. She’s rushed to the hospital. Not even the nanobots can make labor a breeze, but eventually she gives birth to a daughter—a normal half-Indian/half-white daughter. Simon shows up while she’s recovering to see them. And so they live happily ever after, right?

And that set up the third story where Vinaya has essentially retired so she her husband and daughter can live peacefully--until things go to Hell.  Here's the rough description for Taking a Chance:

The silhouette thing doesn't work so well here.

It’s like 3 years later and Vinaya and Simon are married with their daughter Gita (or whatever). Vinaya has reluctantly stepped back from field work to avoid endangering her life and her family. Mostly she’s just a consultant, though sometimes they do need her unique set of skills.

She’s accompanying her boss (and former girlfriend) to a conference in some foreign country. It seems like a milk run, but after a night of some drinking and confessions, Vinaya wakes up to find her boss disappeared. She doesn’t find any clues and when the local cops start hassling her, she returns home.

When she gets back, she receives a video of her boss being held captive and tortured. A masked man demands Simon bring him all the information on the nanobots in 48 hours or he’ll kill her. Rather than risk Simon, Vinaya decides she’ll use the nanobots to look like him and make the drop. The former drill sergeant and a team will accompany her to the exchange. They get to some remote place in Europe or Africa or whatever. As they’re making the exchange, Vinaya manages to turn the tables on them and with her team get their boss back.

Except it was a trick! During this exchange, the masked man took Simon and Gita. In a gloating video he reveals himself to be some former rival from Vinaya’s con man days.

Vinaya returns home, devastated to have lost her husband and daughter. Her boss comforts her as best she can and promises they’ll get them back.

Vinaya visits her hacker friend, who doesn’t have anything on where the guy might have gone. Vinaya thinks about her former rival, trying to remember something she can use. She remembers he used to hang out at a certain pub in London and that he has a thing for Asian girls. So she changes herself into a young Asian girl and then gets a flight to London.

She trolls the pub, subtly finding out if the guy has been around. At the same time she’s looking for any clues on where her family might be. After a couple of nights the guy shows up and starts hitting on her. He offers to take her home and she agrees.

Except it’s a trap! He takes her instead to some warehouse, where he has Simon working on the nanobots. But having the real thing should expedite things, right?

Except it’s a trap! Vinaya was counting on him not really buying her act so she planned a surprise for him. She’s able to rescue Simon but in the confusion the bad guy is able to grab Gita. Vinaya tracks him down and there’s a standoff. Somehow Vinaya manages to distract him enough to get Gita and take the guy out.

They go home and Vinaya comforts her daughter. She decides to leave CHANCE at least temporarily to keep Gita safe. Simon is torn because he doesn’t want to abandon his research, but he eventually comes with her to ride off into the sunset.

Maybe someday I'll write the sequels.  Or not.  What do you think?