Wow, it's been a long time since I've been here. If you're reading this, you are getting the message months after the novel itself has been finished. Isn't technology wonderful? However 'months' is not adequate to summarize the hellish timeframe of this book. Even the larger number of 'months' I used to write this whole draft doesn't cover it. I've been trying to redo the original Double Rainbow (which you're free to browse on here, at your own peril) for two years. It will be four years since the original's creation in November, and about five since its conception at some vague time in April. This story is what propelled me from a dreamer to a doer, and no matter how flawed the original is or how this story pales in comparison to more recent works, I will always love it for that.

As for the story itself: writing is a kind of interdimensional travel, one of the only kinds we as a species are capable of with our current level of technology. I have never physically been to Omnia, nor any of my worlds, but I feel firmly that a good portion of my life has been better lived there than anywhere else. It's at least a little more dramatic than me sitting in my room for hours upon hours, alone. I do not feel alone when writing. My greatest wish in life is to write the kind of story where the reader no longer feels alone, either, upon reading the book. I write to connect.

I would love to tell you this story is as pristine as it appeared in my mind when I first thought of it, but that would be a lie. No story is- this is because ideas are vague. Writing is like seeing a mirage miles in the distance and pointing at it, decreeing, "I'm going to live there." You walk after it until you think you might be dying and in the end, often end up making your own kind of paradise. It is slow going to say the least.

One of the biggest things that deterred me over the course of writing this book is that I started at the end. There is so much I have not developed, from things that are hinted at (Evelscan dialect) to things such as units of time or sayings, even major plot points that are whisked aside due to lack of knowledge, and these became painfully obvious to me as I wrote the story. I want this world to be real, as I have mentioned above, and that is going to be a progress. This is another step, but The Space Between Stars begins near the end of Dreamland chronology. I can't convey the true nature of the Obsidians in one book (how much can you get out of a race of hivemind shapeshifters whose existence is so streamlined, so effortless (and meaningless), that they are devoid of the very chaos that causes timelines to split and defines a species as living?) it has to be built up across history. Natrina's story? A many-book, layered affair as well. I've begun at the sixty-second of sixty-three stories, and as such, I spend a lot of the book compensating for things the readers could not know. A mistake? I'd prefer to say a learning experience, but definitely something in need of remedy.

There's also a lot of revision needed on the technical side, but I think, at the least, this is an improvement over the original. The first version of this story was a learning experience, first and foremost, and now, on what is arguably a third draft, I am still learning from Avery, Iris, Torch, and all my other characters. Here's hoping they'll stick around a while longer- I'm not done with them yet.

-Chrona