As the publishing date for Year of the Dragon Lord approached, I needed to name the sequel so I could reference it as continuing the story. All my original ideas (such as Enter the Dragon Lord, which I considered as the title of the first book) were tripe. As I stared at the phrase "The story continues in...", Nemeses Unexpected popped out.
This wasn't on my radar. I already knew who Gerald's primary nemesis was, and I only planned to introduce one more in the second book. I also wanted to use "dragon lord" in each of the titles.
But it felt right, and I had already blown past the internal publication date. It was going to be tight to make the book available for Christmas. Nemeses Unexpected it was.
The first book, as noted elsewhere, was new to me as I wrote it. Every chapter was a fresh surprise- like opening a lunch box hoping you will find a decent sandwich, and finding instead one of your favorite meals.
The second book was also like that, but with a new ice cream flavor each day- none of which was earwax.
Gerald has lots of surprises in this book, including more than one nemesis. He just might find earwax ice cream more palatable than some of what he has to deal with, but you can decide for yourself late this year when you read Nemeses Unexpected.
The title was not inspired by Star Trek, or by any other movie or book. I like the word nemesis (or in this case its plural). It fit so I used it.