Meredith Mansfield, Author

I’ve reached the point in WAR OF MAGIC,

where the plot line intersects with my already-published short story, “Becoming Lioness”.

You’d think that’d make this section easier, because I’ve sort of already written it. And in some ways, it will. But it’s also going to be . . . interesting to manage, because there are some noticeable differences between the two, as I’ve blogged about once before. I realized there’d be an issue back then, but now that I’m up to the actual writing of that part, the problems are a little clearer.

Some things are just minor points that changed between the time “Becoming Lioness” was published three years ago. Mostly small things, some of which I can fix with minor adjustments to “Becoming Lioness”.

The birth order of three siblings has changed in the interim, for example. That’s not a huge deal. I can just leave the second brother out altogether. That’ll mean deleting all of one or two sentences.

One thing that’s changed won’t be quite so minor: how a character whose ability to use her magic was blocked, gains the use of her magic after all. That’s not necessarily insurmountable, but it’s sure going to be interesting to deal with.

I’m already planning a revised version of “Becoming Lioness” to deal with some of this, but I’ll eventually want to put together a boxed set of the DUAL MAGICS series. And if I include the couple of tie-in short stories already published, plus a couple that I haven’t pulled together yet–well, that’ll put the two versions side by side.

And that’s an issue for all of the short stories. Because the main thing I have to change to make the short stories work at all is to reduce the number of characters. The cast appropriate–and necessary–for a four-book series of epic fantasy novels is simply unmanageable in a short story.