Michael J. Sullivan hosts a Q&A discussion

It is frequently said that art/poems/movies/stories (insert you choice) is never finished, only abandoned.

Realizing that it is hard to argue with success, here's a question. Looking back on this series, is there anything that you now wished you'd changed and/or done differently with regards to the story itself?

I actually wouldn't change very much at all, but I did get two bites at the apple.

When I originally wrote The Crown Conspiracy, Myron ended up killing a guard out of self-defense. At some point a reader pointed out to me that was very "un Myronlike" and in reflecting I had to agree. When Orbit bought the series I wanted to keep most of it the way it was but I was able to make that adjustment so that Myron doesn't end up killing anyone. I think it makes more sense, and Myron is happy for that.

There are a few VERY minor tweaks that I want to make now that I'm doing the prequel. For instance there are several references in Revelations that mention a job that Royce and Hadrian did. They scaled the Crown Tower, stole something then put it back the next night. I said this in at least two places....

When writing The Crown Tower (which is the full story of that job), I realized that the book would be so much better if I was not constrained by events already mentioned....so...I've rewritten history a bit. In The Crown Tower the first trip up was done by just Royce and the second trip was done by both of them. Also they don't occur one day after the next there is a few days between. So....I would like to go in and adjust those passages to match the Crown Tower.

But, this demonstrates exactly why I wrote all six books of Revelations before releasing any. When I was writing late in the series I could go back and adjust things to make sure there were no inconsistencies.

So all in all I'm VERY happy with the story and how all the pieces fell. I get people saying they saw this-or-that coming and others saying they were totally surprised so that makes me think that I walked the tightrope pretty good.

All that being said...I think polishing the actual sentences is something you can do forever. There's rarely a time when I pickup my book and read a page where I don't think ... ah I should have taken out that word...or I should have used a different word.

I'm not one who obsesses too much. I've got so many stories to tell that I would rather write another one than do a third of fourth pass on one that really is "done." It's the old 80/20 rule. You can spend huge amounts of time making very minor incremental changes at some point, so it is best to call it done and move on to something else.

Really interesting answer, so then I assume that what's in Crown Tower is now cannon for the story of Royce and Hadrian?

Yeah...it was unfortunate that it didn't align perfectly. I try to convince myself that "They just remember it wrong" in Revelations ;-)

I'm sure I'll take some heat for it, but Crown is a much better story because of the way that plays out. I'm hoping to be able to make adjustments in future revisions.