Novelist Terry McMillan started to notice something distressing a few years ago about many of the women she was meeting, women in their mid-40s and up.

“They would whisper things in my ear about how sad they were,” McMillan said.

Quite a few were divorced or unhappy in their marriages. Some were empty-nesters. Others had never been married.

“Some had almost thrown in the towel,” she said.

McMillan, creator of what became a literary and movie event of the 1990s, “Waiting to Exhale,” decided to take action in the way fiction writers do: write a new book. McMillan will visit Kansas City Tuesday to discuss her recently published novel, “Getting to Happy.”

In her own life, McMillan had traveled to sorrow and beyond, namely “anger” and “devastation.” Several years ago she went through a famously hostile divorce after her then-husband, Jonathan Plummer, revealed he was gay. Just when things seem to be going smoothly, she said, betrayal and loss rise up in many forms.

“I realized I wasn’t alone, and I wanted to deal with some of these issues,” McMillan said.

Even though the female protagonists of “Waiting to Exhale” were a sensation to readers and filmgoers, especially among African-American women, McMillan never planned a sequel. She had moved on.

But it didn’t take long for the idea to spark: Those four characters — Savannah, Bernadine, Robin and Gloria — would now be 15 years older, solidly in middle age and similarly dealing with a new set of life issues.

First, McMillan had to reread “Exhale” to immerse herself in the attitudes and voices of the characters. Again, going back was not her style.

“That took some doing,” she said. “I thought those women were a little on the desperate side.”

A lot can happen in 15 years, and in the first few chapters of “Getting to Happy,” a lot does happen, or is revealed.

Savannah, a television news producer, feels distant from husband Isaac, who’s apparently in love with Internet porn. Robin is an insurance executive and a single mother who longs for married life. Bernadine, who gave up her restaurant business, is betrayed by her second husband living a second life. She develops a prescription drug habit. And Gloria, who owns a successful salon and is in a loving marriage, finds her life, as anyone’s, can turn on a dime.

“I found all four of their scenarios very sad,” McMillan said, “and that’s what I wanted to explore. We all go through our own forms of hell, men and women alike. It’s how you get through it. It’s how you get past it.”

Her own fury was instructive.

“Ultimately I forgave my ex-husband,” she said. “But for the most part I was tired of being angry. I had become this other person I did not like. I didn’t know her. We have to take responsibility for our own happiness.”

As with “Exhale,” McMillan likely will hear criticism that the men in “Happy” are stereotypically unsavory. McMillan counters that, in fact, there also are good men in the book, but they often are overlooked because “bad traits loom larger.”

“And it’s a novel,” she said, “so there’s conflict.”

A novel for now, but eventually a movie?

McMillan said 20th Century Fox has purchased the rights, and she has co-written a script. She said three of the four starring actresses from “Waiting to Exhale” are likely on board for the sequel: Angela Bassett as Bernadine, Lela Rochon as Robin and Loretta Devine as Gloria. Whitney Houston as Savannah is more of a question mark: “We want to make sure Whitney is feeling better.”