Nicole asked Michael J. Sullivan:

Hi. I noticed that the account of the Crown Tower job in Percepliquis is different from what is shown in the book The Crown Tower. Is that intentional?

Michael J. Sullivan Yes, and no. Yes, in the respect that I knew I was altering history when I wrote it, but no in the respect that I would have preferred the two to align 100%.

For those who don't know. In the Riyria Revelations (which was the series I wrote first). There were a few stated comments:

1. That there were two trips up the tower - this is so in each book.

2. That Royce and Hadrian went on both trips - in Chronicles Royce goes up the first time on his own and the second time it's Royce & Hadrian

3. That the two trips happened in consecutive nights. In Chronicles there are several days between the two trips.

Here's the issues. When I wrote Revelations I thought it was "cool" for there to be two trips in two nights, so I wrote it that way. It was "in essence" they way the events occurred. And it wasn't a big deal.

When I finished Revelations, I had no intention on writing anything else with Royce and Hadrian...and definitely nothing related to their first "gig" together. After my wife became so depressed with the lack of Hadrian in her life...and because so many readers were asking for more, I decided to write more. I had a few choices (1) write a sequel - but I didn't want to do that because I really liked how Revelations wrapped up. (2) write the origin story - which had some appeal to me because there were some characters that didn't get enough "screen time" and I could rectify that (like more time with Gwen etc). (3) write s "random" story of some adventure that happened in their past. This didn't have much appeal to me because I felt if I was going to write "something" with them - I should do the "origin" which was only lightly hinted at.

So...I started writing the book and as the story unfolded I came to a cross road. I could "keep to the story" and have both scale the tower twice but I had some even better plot lines that would unfold if I could make some modifications. Seeing the scaling twice would be boring...and having done the job once...Hadrian probably would have no reason to do it a second time. Plus I wanted a "first time" perspective of the tower from Hadrian's point of view. Those are just some of the issues, the list is actually quite long but the bottom line is I could "stay true" to those two little events...and have a "lesser book" or I could make these two minor modifications which would lead to a better book. I chose the second.

Continuity issues like that are generally avoided because I write entire series before publishing any books...and had I designed the books to be 8 rather than 6 then that wouldn't have happened. But I think it is a little cheating that made The Crown Tower a better book. I'm debating making it a bit of a wink-wink gag going forward...for instance I can see that at some point Albert starts changing the story. When Hadrian tries to correct him, Albert complains as it makes for a better "sales job" to say it occurred in consecutive nights. After years of telling the "revised tale" it ends up becoming more routine to them then the truth of a several day spread. ;-)

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