Over the next few weeks I’m going to be going over The Two Dragons, book 5 in the Senta and the Steel Dragon series.  The Two Dragons saw more revision than any of the other books.  This was because, as I have mentioned before, I wrote books 1, 3, and 5 to be a single book.  When I realized this was too big, I also decided that I would write two more books to go between them, as well as a free prequel.  So after writing books 1, 3, and 5 I wrote book 0, then published book0, and then published book 1.

Then I wrote book 2 and published that.  I went back and revised book 3 and then published it.  Then I wrote and published book 4, and finally got back to book 5, almost three years after I had originally written it.  I had to take into account all the things I had written in books 2 and 4 and makes sure they weren’t contradicted.

Of course I needed titles for the individual books.  When they were the parts of a single story called The Steel Dragon, they were labeled Expedition, Colony, and Dominion.  There were several variations before I settled on the final titles.  The Two Dragons is of course a nod to The Two Towers by J.R.R. Tolkien.

Finally I had written a long epilog that told what happened to every character for the rest of their lives.  By the time that I had finished book 5, I had figured out that I might want to write more of the series.  So the epilog was taken off and and entirely new end chapter was added.  Incidentally two HUGE things were added that hadn’t been there before, both of which play a prominent part in book 6.