\nFinished 9\/1986
\nSubmitted to Del Rey Books 9\/17\/1986
\nAccepted: 9\/1987. Sort of.
\nPUBLISHED: 6\/1\/1988
\n* * * * * * * * * * * *
\n2\/1998: Sold reprint rights to Meisha Merlin as part of a 7-book deal
\n2001:\u00a0 Ace buys mmp rights to all 7<\/p>\n
* * *<\/p>\n
Sharon speaking.\u00a0 So, Agent of Change\u00a0<\/em>was accepted by Del Rey in December 1986, after spending a couple of years being rejected, and then waiting around until February 1988 to hit the streets to no acclaim whatsoever.<\/p>\n The Wisdom of Our Elders passed down to the young fry is: once you’ve finished a book, and it’s making the rounds, the very best thing you can do for your sanity is!<\/p>\n Write another book.<\/p>\n As it turns out, this is very good advice, because at the very least it gives you something to think about besides, “Oghodoghodoghod, will they like it?\u00a0 Should I have made the main character’s hair blonde instead of black?\u00a0 Oh, no!\u00a0 I should have gone back and changed that scene where –”\u00a0 Yeah, no.\u00a0 That way lies madness, literal madness.\u00a0 Much better to fill your head with other stuff, and nothing<\/em> fills your head like writing a novel.<\/p>\n Steve and I started to write — a short story.\u00a0 I had been thinking, as one does, of Val Con’s family and his brother, Shan, and Shan’s first mate.\u00a0 I talked about them with Steve — brand new characters, now; not old friends like Val Con and Miri — but I found them interesting, even though I didn’t know anything about them.<\/p>\n Steve suggested that I write a short story about these people, as a way of discovering who they were.\u00a0 This would have been our — at least my — very first Discovery Story, and it sounded like a fine idea to me, because, after all, wasn’t that how I had come to know Val Con and Miri — by telling stories about them?<\/p>\n So, I sat myself down to write the short story that would reveal these people to me.\u00a0 That’s what we called it, by the way, “The Short Story,” and we continued to call it “The Short Story” until it tipped the scales at 50,000 words, and we had to admit that it was a novel.<\/p>\n Unlike Agent<\/em>, which took its time getting published after it was accepted, Conflict<\/em> was (as we learn from that comment on the story card “Sort of.”) grudgingly accepted a year after submission, it was then published a bare nine months later, only four months after Agent<\/em> appeared.<\/p>\n At that time, we thought that was a Good Thing.\u00a0 As it turned out, we were wrong, but who was to know?<\/p>\n The reason Conflict<\/em> was published with such blazing speed is because someone else had blown their delivery date, and Del Rey had to publish some<\/em>thing in order to, as we used to say, “hold the pocket.”\u00a0 In essence, Conflict<\/em> was a placeholder.\u00a0 It had a much lower print-run than Agent<\/em>, as befit a throwaway book, and which we found out when we had arranged for a book signing, and our editor said, “Why?” and then?\u00a0 the bookstore could barely find a case of books to order in for the event.<\/p>\n It did, however, get really good distributions at PXs worldwide; in fact the very first Liaden book many of our service men read, according to our sample, was Conflict of Honors<\/em>.<\/p>\n * * *<\/p>\n Tagline:\u00a0 “Her piloting and unexpected skills won her respect, honor, and an enemy for life!”<\/p>\n Back cover copy:<\/p>\n ORPHAN OF THE STORM<\/p>\n Priscilla Delacroix y Mendoza was an outcast, disowned by her family and her world.\u00a0 Ever since, she had made her way from spaceship to spaceship, taking whatever jobs were available and studying for a pilot’s license whenever there was time.<\/p>\n Her luck changed when she found work on a Liaden ship under Captain Shan yos’Galan–for the first time since her exile, she had found a home. But her happiness ended when she was repeatedly attacked by someone with a personal grudge against her.\u00a0 Because she was calling danger down on her new friends, as well as herself, Priscilla decided to leave the ship.<\/p>\n But then Shan yos’Galan taught her his Liaden ways, showing her that revenge is the best revenge . . .<\/p>\n FIRST TIME IN PRINT<\/p>\n Artwork by Stephen Hickman From the story card: Conflict of Honors 86,000 words\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0Lee & Miller #7 Finished 9\/1986 Submitted to Del Rey Books 9\/17\/1986 Accepted: 9\/1987. Sort of. PUBLISHED: 6\/1\/1988 * * * * * * * * * * * * 2\/1998: Sold reprint rights to Meisha Merlin as part of a 7-book deal 2001:\u00a0 … Continue reading Conflict of Honors Intro<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":2021,"menu_order":2,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-2063","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/splinteruniverse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2063","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/splinteruniverse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/splinteruniverse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/splinteruniverse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/splinteruniverse.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2063"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/splinteruniverse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2063\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2067,"href":"https:\/\/splinteruniverse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2063\/revisions\/2067"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/splinteruniverse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2021"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/splinteruniverse.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2063"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nInventory card from Gordons Bookseller<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/splinteruniverse.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/Conflict-of-Honors-cover-Del-Rey-scaled.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"