What happened after the book ends?

Jax­on, of Acme, Wash­ing­ton, wrote to ask, “What hap­pened to Crispin and Owen after they got on the ship to Ice­land?” Ques­tions like that, what hap­pened after the book ends? are not uncom­mon. You can con­sid­er them in a num­ber of ways: that I have not com­plete­ly sat­is­fied my read­er; that the sto­ry (and char­ac­ters) are so real that the read­er feels the char­ac­ters must have a fur­ther life; that the read­er has enjoyed being with the char­ac­ters so much they want to spend more time with them. I sus­pect that these same thoughts work on the writer, too. I had not planned to write the six Pop­py books, but I so enjoyed the char­ac­ters, I want­ed to write more about them. After writ­ing Night Jour­neys I wor­ried so about the fate of the char­ac­ters, I had a dream about what hap­pened next, and indeed, fol­lowed that dream to write Encounter at Eas­t­on  (the only time that ever hap­pened). In the case of the Crispin books, my first mus­ings on the sto­ry were such that I con­tem­plat­ed four vol­umes, which would ulti­mate­ly lead to, among oth­er things, “What hap­pened to Crispin and Owen after they got on the ship to Ice­land?” A publisher’s deci­sion, in which I part­ly con­curred, meant that I did not write that fourth vol­ume. But in fact, I do know (in my head) what hap­pened to Crispin. And I will, some­day, write that saga.