Introduction to Volume Two:

Phase Change Collection

Changing Phases for Fun and Profit

Phase change. It happens. Add heat to ice and you get liquid water, add heat to water and you get steam. You may have read about it in school.

But what they didn't tell you in school is that phase change happens to people as well as to molecules; to writers, to readers — and to the people who live inside of books.

In this case, Phase Change happens to be a little more than a handy title for this second bundle of Liaden Universe� novels; it's also descriptive of the process that got us here — you, us, and them.

Like we said in the introduction to Korval's Legacy, when we started writing Liaden stories we had A Plan. Simply stated, that plan was: (1) to have fun and (2) to get on our writing bicycle built for two and ride furiously from the first sentence of Agent of Change until we got to the end of sequence. Action, adventure, romance, and zoom, all rolled up into seven books, non-stop.

Agent of Change, Conflict of Honors, and Carpe Diem pretty much adhered to that ride-the-bike in a straight line going downhill mode, zoom zoom! — but then a phase change happened, and the publisher decided to let the story "end" at the conclusion of Carpe Diem.

That was ...difficult. Especially so because we'd undergone a phase change of our own, and could no longer stop thinking about our characters and their doings. Worse, since the publisher, seeking a more-or-less coherent end to the "series," had asked us to remove an "extra" character's sub-plot, we had a teeming back-story demanding to redefined.

We did the only thing we knew to do — we continued to write. It was still fun — for us, anyway. And so Local Custom and Scout's Progress happened, written by us, for us. They illuminate much, set the stage for many more things...but weren't in the original plan.

Still, the books very much wanted to be written and once published, Scout's Progress won the Prism Award for Best Futuristic Romance in 2002, while Local Custom came in second for the same award. Talk about a phase change! Here we'd thought we were writing science fiction!

That brings us to I Dare, which had undergone its own change of phase, because of the alterations made to Carpe Diem — and no, we didn't think it was a good idea to go back and try to reset what had been taken apart in the past, because things had been added on to the canon that needed to stay. I Dare quite effectively ended the main line of the original Agent of Change sequence, while leaving room for something else.

In our case, the "something else" involved fulfilling a promise made to two characters back, 'way back, almost to the beginning.

Crystal Soldier and Crystal Dragon should have been one book, but publishers have technical reasons for not wanting too large a novel. One is that some bookstores won't carry novels with a price point over $24.95. The other is that shipping charges go berserk. In any case, Crystal Soldier and Crystal Dragon together are the story we felt we couldn't write properly in the early days of our joint career, so actually getting to it, and writing it down, was a terrific change for us, and a burden lifted from our shoulders.

And then, just when we thought we'd finished...

There was this kid who kept trying to jump his way into stories, but he didn't quite fit. And suddenly — another phase change — we saw why. He was a before! Right, his adventure came before Val Con and Miri and crew by a number of generations.

The kid's name was Jethri, and Balance of Trade was his story to make or break. But wait! He hadn't first appeared as someone staking out a novel — nope, he'd come riding in on a very short scene that became a novelette. It was only after the story (and the kid!) wouldn't leave us alone that he and it changed phase — from short to long — and won the Hal Clement Award for Best YA novel of 2004, too.

And now?

We're in the midst of another phase change, and a whole different way of looking around us.

And you — you have Phase Change before you.

Enjoy!

Steve Miller and Sharon Lee
Unity Maine
February 4, 2007