I hit a painful dry spell before I got the second book in the series even started. Over a year went by with nothing being typed in my computer. (A Kaypro 10, a big black sucker that looked like Darth Vader's lunch bucket.)

Part of this was the "Second Book Syndrome". Up 'til then, I'd just been having fun writing for a few good friends. Now, every word that I put down would be printed and seen by thousands of people! It was scary!

Then there was the problem that while the author has almost complete control over what goes between the covers, the publisher decides what goes on the outside. The cover, the blurbs, and the title. Judy-Lynn Del-Rey, Owen's boss, had decided that "The Day-Glow Knight" would make a very lovely title.

My thought was that I would prefer having red hot corn dogs shoved up my butt, on a daily basis, to having my name on a book with that for a title. Part of the delay in getting the book out was a sit-down strike on my part. Owen filled the gap by buying Copernick's Rebellion.

The current title was suggested by someone named Daeber from the incipient shire of Three Walls, in the SCA. He also sold me a fourteen year old slave girl who promptly ran away, but then Daeber was also the leader of the Thief's Guild.

I don't know if what I had was constipation or a very upset stomach, but when it finally broke loose, it came out of both ends in massive flows. I wrote the entire book in three weeks flat, and I still think that it is one of the better things that I've ever done.

When you're doing a series, one of problems an author faces is the "What Has Come Before" part. If the reader read the first book at all, it might have been years before, and you have to bring him up to speed. But if he just finished book one last night, you don't want to bore him.

What I did throughout this series was to introduce a new narrator in each book, who re-told the story, but from his own perspective. It worked out pretty well, I thought.

I also had fun writing the same scene several times, from the perspective of different characters, mostly to show the difference in Medieval and Modern thought patterns.

Conrad goes to the land granted him by the Count, and starts to put up buildings and factories. The Germanic Knights of the Cross and a long chain of naked slaves cause problems, resulting in the usual slaughter, mortal combat, and so forth.

But, I don't want to spoil your enjoyment of the book by telling you too much of the plot.

Enjoy.