“These people know nothing about us or our time. There aren’t even many legends. The most ancient memory they have is called “The Leaving.” It’s a story about how people climbed on a giant bird and left for the stars.”
In the end, that legend proved to be true, and those people of The Leaving eventually returned to give us the answers we needed.
Two more small Easter eggs.
Did you notice that all of the returning humans had odd names, but one? That one was, of course, Emily, the artist. So, why did she have such a twentieth century name? One possible solution I might posit is that Emily, also sometimes known as Emillion, was a substantial character in my Middle Falls Time Travel Series. Are the two the same? I leave that up to you to decide, but I will say that Watchers are everywhere, and they are unlikely to go away as the centuries pass.
Finally, after the returning humans have revealed all their secrets, Alex has this line of dialogue: “All of this—my entire life—comes down to being collateral damage from events that happened centuries after I would have died.” That is a small nod to my favorite book by one of my favorite authors, The Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut. That book had a similar revelation for its protagonist at the end of the book. These little Easter eggs usually happen when I am still up writing long past the midnight hour.
One of my favorite parts of this book is the idea at the end where Alex, Sanda, and Amy combine together to launch the prophecy that became such a large part of the Winten-ah culture. I wish I could say that was my idea, but it didn’t come from me, though I massaged it a bit.
That idea came from my friend Terry Schott, who is my alpha reader on every book I write. He reads along and makes suggestions and points out problems as I am writing the book. We’ve been doing this for each other for about six years and many, many books now. I would feel lost without his feedback and great ideas.
In the Author’s Note for Lost in Kragdon-ah, I forgot to mention what song I listened to as I wrote. For new arrivals, I pick a single song and listen to it on endless repeat while I write each book. For A Door into Time, that song was Donovan’s Hurdy Gurdy Man. I broke with tradition slightly and used the same song for both Lost in Kragdon-ah and Return from Kragdon-ah. I went with a Donovan song again, but a beautiful cover version instead. I used Al Kooper’s transcendent, soulful cover of Season of the Witch for these last two books. Yes, that means I listened to that song hundreds and hundreds of times over the last five months.
I mentioned Michal Karcz, who designed the cover. I am just so thrilled to be able to work with him on this series. I am pleased to say, he has agreed to do the rest of the covers in the series as well. I can hardly wait to see what images he comes up with next.
In my last two Author’s Notes, I’ve talked about my friend from childhood, Jerry Weible, and how he agreed to make the B&W drawings that I include in the book. Jerry and I read a lot of the same kind of books as kids—Robert E. Howard, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Jules Verne, and HG Wells. We also loved to hunt through used bookstores for the distinctive TOR covers. Inside many of those books, there were simple drawings like Jerry replicated here. I think the drawings he did for Return from Kragdon-ah are my favorites of all.
The challenge with having these cool drawings in the book is that they need to be prepped for inclusion. That’s a bit beyond my skill set (by a country mile) and I am so fortunate to have Mark Sturgell handle that for me as my graphics support person. He knows how to do all the things with images that I am clueless about. He also serves as one of my proofreaders and fact checkers.
Here’s a guilty secret. I write quickly. That’s how I manage to put out four to six books every year. But, there’s a downside to writing quickly, and that is that I make a lot of mistakes. I create typos by the bushel basket. That’s why I need so many proofreaders. I create way too many mistakes for any single proofer to catch them all.
Debra Galvan has been my longest-serving proofreader. She’s been with me so long, I can’t remember a time when she wasn’t catching my mistakes. Right behind her in terms of service is Dan Hilton. Dan has edited several of my Middle Falls series and proofread at least my last dozen books. Special shout out to Dan, who not only proofreads, but also catches some of my grammatical mistakes. Marta Rubin also catches those errors and dozens and dozens of others. She is my Mistress of the Comma. I personally, believe there are five rules for proper comma usage, but no one knows what they are. Marta shows me that’s not true. She does. And yes, she is the namesake for the Marta who returns to Earth. Aimee Haire and Lynn Weible also loaned me their sharp eyes for this book. I am grateful to all of them for their contributions to keeping me on the straight and narrow.
More than anything, I am grateful to be able to get up every day, make my commute from my bedroom to my office, and sit at my computer and make up stories. I do my best to reveal truth by making up lies.
That wouldn’t work without you. I only start the story. You finish it as you read it. Thank
