PFEFFERITIS.

So there I was, innocently reading the comments on Brooklyn Arden's review of (the fantabulous) Life As We Knew It, and what do I discover?

There's going to be a companion novel.

I nosed around the internet and found a bit more info.  I also discovered that Susan Beth Pfeffer is clearly very cool.  From the SCI FI Wire:

"I've just completed a companion novel for Life As We Knew It, taking the same meteor and the same moon, but [focusing] on a lower-middle-class teenage boy in New York City," she said. "Given that the new book is called The Dead and the Gone, it's a reasonable assumption that things aren't all that great in New York either."

With tongue in cheek, Pfeffer added: "I figure with 300 million people alive in the United States, even if I write about 10 people a book, I can still get another 2,999,998 novels out of that meteor, and that should keep me busy and entertained well past the foreseeable future."

Yeesh.  And I'd just gotten over my Look-To-The-Skies-Oh-Hell-I-Really-Need-To-Stock-Up-On-The-Canned-Goods-And-Install-A-Woodstove mentality.

More here.