By the end of 2009, I had already decided that I was going to publish The Voyage of the Minotaur myself.  I had three fairly popular free books out there– His Robot Girlfriend, and the two Eaglethorpe Buxton stories.  So I thought, what I really need is a prequel to distribute free that will drive interest for The Voyage of the Minotaur and subsequent books.

Brechalon was a difficult task, because I was trying to set up what would happen in a year or two before the action really starts.  Two of my main characters were at this point fairly uninteresting children and a third was in prison.  I decided to focus on the others, so I had the Iolanthe-Terrence-Yuah story line, the Iolanthe-Zeah story line and the Augie story line.  In addition I followed Zurfina into the prison.  Those decisions brought out a couple of other weaknesses.  The most interesting thing about Terrence is his drug addiction, but I couldn’t show too much of it without giving it away, and the most interesting thing about Zurfina is her magic, and she was in an anti-magic prison cell.  In the end, I was pretty happy with the story, though I don’t think it does much more than hint at what really is to come in The Voyage of the Minotaur.

I don’t think I’ll ever attempt a prequel of this type again.