{"id":2068,"date":"2026-02-05T01:17:32","date_gmt":"2026-02-05T01:17:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/splinteruniverse.com\/?p=2068"},"modified":"2026-02-05T01:17:32","modified_gmt":"2026-02-05T01:17:32","slug":"conflict-of-honors-summing-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/splinteruniverse.com\/?p=2068","title":{"rendered":"Conflict of Honors, Summing Up"},"content":{"rendered":"

When last we saw our Intrepid Authors, they were rolling the last page of the fair copy of their first novel, Agent of Change<\/em>, out of a literally burning typewriter.<\/p>\n

That typewriter being Officially Declared Toast by the technicians at the local stationary store, Lee and Miller were at something of a technical disadvantage with regard to their chosen field of endeavor.<\/p>\n

An expedition was planned to the Giant Graveyard of Used Office Machines in Baltimore City, for a day when both authors were free of their day-jobs, but before that expedition could be mounted, Sharon arrived home from work one day to find a brand new and blue Swintec “electronic typewriter” on her desk.<\/p>\n

I’m not sure I ever got the details of the deal that had resulted in this rather major miracle.\u00a0 We were broke, and I really don’t think we had anything to sell for funds sufficient to purchase a state of the art typer.\u00a0 Let it merely stand as a fact that suddenly! there was a working typewriter in the house, and?<\/p>\n

Writing could go forth.<\/p>\n

As we shall.<\/p>\n

Conflict of Honors\u00a0<\/em>was written on the blue Swintec, which, oddly for us at that time, had no name other than The Swintec, which was as different from Uncle Harry as Conflict<\/em> was from Agent<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Not only was Conflict<\/em> different, it was better written.\u00a0 Mind you, Agent<\/em> had been good enough — the prose got the job done, and the narrative showed not only flair, but an interesting touch with character and worldbuilding.\u00a0 Plus, there was all that action!\u00a0\u00a0<\/em>My goodness<\/em>, a lot happens in Agent of Change<\/em>, and as a foundation story by writers who were still discovering Almost Everything, it’s really quite amazing.<\/p>\n

Conflict of Honors <\/em>had the advantage of being our second novel.\u00a0 Even though we were firmly convinced that what we were doing was writing a short story, the experience of already having written one novel was salutary, though the process of writing the second book was vastly different from writing the first.<\/p>\n

Agent of Change<\/em> was a three-month wonder, written all in a rush.\u00a0 It got a read-through after we had typed The End on the first draft, but not much else.\u00a0 Well.\u00a0 Except for the chaptering.<\/p>\n

Not only was our first novel written all in a rush, it was written as one continuous item. We made liberal use of the two-blank-lines-and!-new-scene method, but we didn’t do anything remotely resembling chapter breaks.<\/p>\n

After reading our draft, I Felt Strongly that we ought to have chapters, but I didn’t have any idea how to decide where the breaks ought to go.\u00a0 Steve had been told or somehow thought he knew that chapters were 10 pages long.\u00a0 So, he went through the draft and on every 11th page wrote a number at the top.\u00a0 He handed the manuscript back to me, and unfortunately my immediately and heartfelt reaction was —<\/p>\n

“That’s<\/em> not right!”<\/p>\n

Steve went for a walk.\u00a0 Or possibly a drive.\u00a0 Maybe both.<\/p>\n

And I sat down to re-read the book, and break it into chapters when it . . . felt right.<\/p>\n

This is called “learning.”<\/p>\n

Once the chapters were in place, I set about typing the fair copy that would become our submission draft.<\/p>\n

Conflict of Honors<\/em> was — after we realized it was a novel — not only more ambitious, but it took longer, physically, to write — very nearly two years, if the story card is to be believed.<\/p>\n

Then, there were the chapter heads.\u00a0 Far from simple One, Two, Three — the chapter heads in Conflict of Honors<\/em> tell you things<\/em>:\u00a0 Where you are, what day it is, what shift it is, what hour<\/em> it is.\u00a0 It was insane, really.\u00a0 Making up the shift roster for the Passage<\/em>, so we would know who was on duty when took days.<\/em><\/p>\n

Steve did question whether this was necessary, but I was a driven woman.<\/p>\n

When the first draft was done, and we had both read it, I brought a suggestion to the table.\u00a0 I wanted the Healers to be active<\/em>.\u00a0 I wanted them, in fact to be able to fix<\/em> trauma, and to nudge people in the direction of embracing change.<\/p>\n

Steve wasn’t completely onboard with us, not because he didn’t want psy powers in the SF — we’d already established Val Con’s “hunches” were a sort of precognition, and said straight out that he’d been tested and found to have a negligible talent for telekinesis.<\/p>\n

No, Steve’s objection was that making that change — making it explicit<\/em> that Healers are interacting with those they help — would alter the story we had in hand.<\/p>\n

He was not wrong, but, yanno?\u00a0 You just can’t tell<\/em> some people; they have to learn it the hard way.<\/p>\n

*waves hand weakly*<\/p>\n

Two things came out of my desire to have interactive empaths in the Liaden Universe:<\/p>\n

1\u00a0 \u00a0I learned the Change One Thing Rule.\u00a0 Oh, boy, didn’t I.<\/p>\n

2\u00a0 \u00a0Conflict<\/em> got a second, and a third<\/em> draft, which made for a smoother end product.<\/p>\n

3\u00a0 \u00a0Healers and psy powers became warp and woof of the Liaden Universe, long before the Tree-and-Dragon Trade Mission sets foot on Colemeno.<\/p>\n

For the record, I regret nothing.<\/p>\n

Moving on to the text, very briefly.\u00a0 I will note that Shan tears up several times in Conflict<\/em> so the folks who attribute men crying to the authors becoming Woke in their dotage are, um — wrong.<\/p>\n

I honestly didn’t know that we had been so imprudent as to actually describe the Passage<\/em>.<\/p>\n

While I’m not sure that Shan’s version of Korval’s foundation is actually what we recorded in the Crystal books, I am amazed that, even then<\/em>, we knew there had been an exodus from another universe.<\/p>\n

I was surprised by the constant use of “galaxy.”<\/p>\n

I am . . . amused by space travel that’s a lot like catching a taxi.\u00a0 Witness Mr. dea’Gauss popping back and forth between Liad and the Passage,\u00a0<\/em>after complaining how much he hates to travel, too.<\/p>\n

Back to the subject of foreshadowing, already it’s set up that Korval is very thin, and most of them young, with only two members of the former generation available to them — Kareen and Luken.<\/p>\n

Really, it was like we knew we’d be working these fields for a good, long time.<\/p>\n

And here ends my summing up of Conflict of Honors<\/em>.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When last we saw our Intrepid Authors, they were rolling the last page of the fair copy of their first novel, Agent of Change, out of a literally burning typewriter. That typewriter being Officially Declared Toast by the technicians at the local stationary store, Lee and Miller were at something of a technical disadvantage with … Continue reading Conflict of Honors, Summing Up<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[25],"class_list":["post-2068","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-liaden-read-along"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/splinteruniverse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2068","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/splinteruniverse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/splinteruniverse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"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=2068"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/splinteruniverse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2068\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2069,"href":"https:\/\/splinteruniverse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2068\/revisions\/2069"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/splinteruniverse.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2068"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/splinteruniverse.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2068"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/splinteruniverse.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2068"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}