Work in Progress: the novels

I've finally decided to take the plunge and start working again on my novel False Gods, with the intention of finally finishing a draft.  Committing to a project like this is a major undertaking and will require much discipline, but it's only a few pages a day, right?  Those few pages, if done consistently, will add up to a completed manuscript, hopefully.  Then I can start revising it, mail it off to a publisher, and start work on another book while I'm waiting.  (Or maybe I won't do another book, I'll just have to see.)  I've been noodling around with FG, much as one would strum a few chords on the guitar.  I've been working on the outline and doing some research reading, but I'm almost done with both of those.  I just need to sit down with the outline and decide where Book One ends.

Book One, you say?  Well, I'd originally intended to write one complete novel.  More and more, I'm thinking it needs to be two or three (a trilogy, even), unless I drastically cut chapters.  That's why I'm working on the outline.  As projected now, Book One would have a definite ending -- the heroes kill the villainous god Amun -- and then leave them with the even bigger problem of the god Set, who then takes control of Amun's army to overthrow his brother, the Pharaoh Osiris.  So there would be a climax, some resolution, and a cliffhanger for Book Two.  I'm actually not sure about what would happen in Book Three.  I appear to have enough plot to fill only two books, which is an unwieldy number seldom seen or sold in stores. Everyone wants a stand-alone or a trilogy (or quartet, quintet, and in Robert Jordan's case, an almost unlimited number of novels in the series).  My goal is to write one book and see how it goes, instead of putting the cart before the horse and worrying too much about future novels.  However, I very much want to tell my complete story, so I need to figure out what it will take to do that.

I do have a new idea, if I ever get there, for a future novel set in present day of an alternate future timeline.  The two main characters from FG have a daughter (Ma'at, goddess of justice), who joins forces with the surviving Set to oppose a coalition of tyranical gods.  If he can't rule the world, no one can!  Set and Ma'at may even find unlikely romance together in this world where Egypt is a major power, and the nations are ruled by the gods of each pantheon.  Basically, the genetic mutation that gave Egyptian gods their power has either spread through the gene pool or evolved separately.  Christianity, led by an immortal, reborn Jesus, struggles as an underground to fight these deities.  I'm not sure if I want to do the last part, but the idea is intriguing.
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