Some time ago, I wrote a children's fantasy in which one of the major characters (a sort of friend and advisor to the MC) was a talking squirrel based on Ratatosk, the squirrel in Norse mythology who ran up and down Yggdrasil the World Ash Tree delivering hostile messages between the eagle at the top and the dragon Nidhog at the bottom. (It also included versions of Yggdrasil, the eagle, and Nidhog, though depicted as more the originals behind the myth than directly the same as the myth, and even with different names; at one point, the squirrel tells the MC that he'd always been surprised that the Vikings he'd informed about the "Great Tree" repeated that information as accurately as they did - especially in light of how much mead they had sloshing about inside them at the time.)
More recently (following some unsuccessful attempts to get that fantasy published), I was inspired to write a retelling of the Norse myths narrated by Ratatosk, and gave him much the same characterization as the talking squirrel in my earlier children's fantasy (including an interpretation of his errand common to both works - he's not keen on being the messenger for the eagle and the dragon, but they made it clear to him that if he doesn't co-operate, he'll be a snack for whichever one he says "No" to first). I liked the retelling, but one thing held me back from working on it further and getting it into a condition where I could submit it to agents and publishers: a fear that it might be more difficult, if it was accepted and published, to submit that earlier children's fantasy (while my take on Ratatosk or his "original" was the same in both works - with whatever differences being largely his role; in the children's fantasy, he was a guide to the MC, while in the retelling, he was the narrator - a sort of Ishmael/Nick-type narrator in being the one who tells the story but tends largely to observe the events - they were set in separate worlds). Would having two similar takes on the same mythological figure, but set in different universes, make it difficult to have both published?
More recently (following some unsuccessful attempts to get that fantasy published), I was inspired to write a retelling of the Norse myths narrated by Ratatosk, and gave him much the same characterization as the talking squirrel in my earlier children's fantasy (including an interpretation of his errand common to both works - he's not keen on being the messenger for the eagle and the dragon, but they made it clear to him that if he doesn't co-operate, he'll be a snack for whichever one he says "No" to first). I liked the retelling, but one thing held me back from working on it further and getting it into a condition where I could submit it to agents and publishers: a fear that it might be more difficult, if it was accepted and published, to submit that earlier children's fantasy (while my take on Ratatosk or his "original" was the same in both works - with whatever differences being largely his role; in the children's fantasy, he was a guide to the MC, while in the retelling, he was the narrator - a sort of Ishmael/Nick-type narrator in being the one who tells the story but tends largely to observe the events - they were set in separate worlds). Would having two similar takes on the same mythological figure, but set in different universes, make it difficult to have both published?
