They say when writing that your first audience should be yourself, the writer. Write the story that you want to read, first and foremost. And that’s what we did when we wrote a short story together called “The Rules of Enchantment” for the anthology OPERATION ARCANA, edited by John Joseph Adams. Months after that story saw print, we kept telling each other that we’d left fun material on the table. “We could write a scene where . . .” and the other would say “Or what if. . . .”
To a very certain extent, we kept writing the story because, well, we wanted to see how much we could continue to entertain ourselves with the setting, characters, and concepts.
And entertain ourselves we did.
It didn’t all happen right away, of course. Writing doesn’t always happen like that. But we kept talking about “the novel” when we got together at cons and such. We planned an extended weekend outlining session that got us about two-thirds of the way through the story, and otherwise noodled around with the ideas in our own brains that we’d excitedly email each other. When Dave unexpectedly lost a job, though, we jumped right into finishing the outline so he would be able to start working on a draft alongside looking for gainful employment.
And then he did get a new job almost immediately, and things wound their slow way along. That first draft happened in the nooks and crannies of a busy life—the last third or so of the first draft, in fact, was composed between scenes of a small stage performance of Romeo & Juliet, in which Dave played Chorus/The Prince. From there, Toby worked his magic on it, then passed it back, and on it went until we were happy with it.
Over a number of years we kept revising it, fine-tuning it with the help of our agent, Hannah Bowman. Finally, after many twists and turns of publishing fate, it ended up in the hands of Jacob Weisman at Tachyon Publications after a late-night conversation with Toby about “this crazy, but fun, book we wrote together that we just adore,” and the rest is, as they say, history.
Which brings us to the people we’d like to thank. Collectively, we’re very grateful to Jacob Weisman, Jaymee Goh, and the whole awesome team over at Tachyon. They do amazing work, and our work is certainly better for being in their caring and capable hands. We’d also like to thank our agent Hannah Bowman, her assistant Lauren Bajek, and everyone at Liza Dawson Associates, who have been tireless champions of our work.
On a personal level, we’d very much like to thank Charles Coleman Finlay, who introduced us to each other at the Detroit-area convention ConFusion, way back in the early ’00s, when we were all just sort of starting out. He seemed to recognize immediately that we were kindred spirits, and he was absolutely correct. Two decades of friendship have borne that out.
Individually, Toby would like to thank Dave for going along with him in this zany experiment. Co-authoring can be a complicated friend-ending experience, but if anything, we’ve gotten closer over the years we spent tinkering with this manuscript. All that time trying to get a laugh out of each other as we gently poked fun at our favorite fantasy, gaming, and RPG tropes that we love from decades of marinating in our favorite genres was time well spent. Toby would also like to thank Emily, his wife, for all the usual patience a creative’s spouse has with their “here-but-not-here” energy as they daydream their way through daily life, and his daughters Thalia and Calliope, who push him toward more and more creative wordplay as they force him to up his game.
And Dave has a huge list of people to thank, but he’ll try to keep it short. First, though, are the Marines and sailors of Alpha Co., 1/24 and Kilo Co., 3/24 for guidance, inspiration, and generally putting up with his nerdy self during his enlistment. Specifically, though, Matt Wright, who was a constant companion in uniform and kept Dave sane through a difficult deployment, and remains a lifelong friend. And then there’s Toby himself, of course, for being a friend and collaborator—lo, these many years. He’d also like to thank John Scalzi and Mary Robinette Kowal for the mentoring, collaboration, encouragement, and friendship they have shown in the time he's known them. And last, but certainly not least, is Dave’s family: his wife Tarri, who does her level best to keep up with his various creative pursuits and, along with Toby’s wife Emily, showed superhuman patience with our late-night con conversations. Tarri is a supreme constant in Dave’s life, and he’s not sure how he could do it without her. And of course, Dave’s kids, one of whom chose to remain nameless in these acknowledgements, so they all get the anonymous treatment. They’re great kids, growing up to be amazing adults, and he draws inspiration from them every day.