Posted By EZ-E on 27 Jun 2009 03:29 AM
You're one of my favorite authors but the way you continually rehash the plot in seemingly each OL book, I don't see how you won't refer to the Wyeth Codex again....Seriously, Mark. What's your take on it?
The first part of your post is easy to answer.
When I revisit my characters and concepts, there will be no connection to DL whatsoever.
If JJ Abrams can reboot Star Trek without really changing it, I can certainly do the same with Outlanders--I introduced the concept of parallel casements into the series years ago.
As for your question about "my take..."
My response has to be a little less facile.
Without going into tedious blow-by-blow detail, I suppose I can offer an explanation, although I suggest the over-sensitive to go ahead skip the rest of this post.
The first OL editor was a lovely woman named Eva Kovacs. She was very much engaged with the creative of process of OL, even during the conception stage. In mid-1998, when she was fired due to an editorial turf war, the so-called "Executive Editor" took over.
It wasn't long before Ex Ed began exhorting me to simplify Outlanders and formulize it like DL to make it easier to plug other writers into it.
He was very uncomfortable with all of the ongoing subplots and continuity and so forth which OL--alone of all Gold Eagle's ongoing series--had in abundance.
He continually cited DL's simplified set-up as a strong selling point. I understood his point of view--Ex Ed wasn't so much an editor (unlike Eva) as a scheduler, a traffic controller. Quality of the product was way down the list of his priorities.
The OLs at that time were 95 to 100k words per book...I was writing four and a half OL books a year and Gold Eagle went to full production on the series before we had a full year's worth of books in the hopper.
More than once, Ex Ed told me to speed up production of a book by basically copying and pasting sections from earlier novels.
I declined to do that, except when new readers needed to be brought up to date. I also declined to come up with a set A to B formula for OL since that would mean my interest in the series would flag.
I also told him I had no problems with other writers contributing to the series as long as I was able to look over their plots and vet the final manuscripts to make sure everybody was on the same page, both literally and figuratively, with the series.
I vetted Mel Odom's first two contributions in the series, Night Eternaland Wreath of Fire--although Night Eternal was really more of a joint operation.
At some point or another around early 1999, I dared to inquire about royalties from the OL audio books which DH Audio had just started producing. The response I received from the Ex Ed was vituperative, waaaaaaay over the top and out of line.
Ugliness ensued. My father died at about the same time that brouhaha began, which slowed my production of, I believe, Armageddon Axis and even more ugliness ensued.
Shortly after that, I was informed it was time to write another trilogy since the Lost Earth Saga had done so well. I provided a plot overview of the three books in the Imperator Wars trilogy and specific story information regarding the three.
My original intention was for Domi to "die" in Tigers of Heaven and not reappear until a few books later--in what became Tomb of Time (hence the Tomb in the title).
At the same time, Mel Odom was assigned another fill-in book, Sargasso Plunder, which was to follow the third book in the trilogy. The plot of Mel's book was not forwarded to me.
After I turned in Book Two of the Imperator War trilogy (Tigers of Heaven), the Ex Ed contacted me to say that Mel prominently featured Domi in Sargasso Plunder, therefore I had to bring her back in the very next book in the trilogy--Purgatory Road.
Needless to say, that announcement completely screwed up the plotlines for the end of Tigers of Heaven and almost all of my original plot for Purgatory Road.
I asked the Ex Ed why my trilogy plots hadn't been forwarded to Mel before he began writing Sargasso Plunder and received this comprehensive and totally satisfying response:
"I don't know."
That's an exact quote, by the way.
Frustrated, furious, now facing the prospect of rewriting the ending of Tigers of Heaven as well as almost all of Purgatory Road, I went ahead and took the Ex Ed's earlier advice:
I cut and pasted sections from earlier books, but because I had to essentially rewrite most of Purgatory Road from scratch, it added more time to the process.
After I turned in Purgatory Road I received the manuscript of Sargasso Plunder to vet--looking over it, I realized that it would have been far easier to excise Domi from the book than it was to force me to rewrite Purgatory Road and change my original plot for Tomb of Time (the truncated ending of Purgatory Road was intended to be a much grander scene at the end of Tomb of Time).
Domi served absolutely no important function to Sargasso Plunder. In other words, there had been NO reason for any of that nonsense
None.
I had been misled, deliberately so.
Once I came to that conclusion, my relationship with the Ex Ed further soured.
I believe now as I did then that the whole thing was done to punish me for asking about royalties, to send me the message that I was replaceable--which was the main reason I was pushed to come up with a formula for Outlanders--to make it like DL so every book ended where it began and there was no character or ongoing plot development.
(I don't hold Mel responsible for any of the above...in my opinion he was used as a pawn in the Ex Ed's cheap power play to bring me and OL to heel.)
In any event, after that string of interconnected incidents, the fire went out of my devotion to Outlanders. I had the occasional resurgence of interest and flashes of energy in the subsequent years, but nothing like I put into the series during its first five years.
In a nutshell--when the Ex Ed wanted me to make it easier on him so he could plug any writer into the series when I became troublesome, I determined to make it easier on myself, too.