I’m now trying to work enough of Memory of Fire into the opening pages of The Wreck of Heaven that people who don’t read the first book won’t crash and burn trying to figure out what the hell is going on in the second.
Introduction of backstory is my absolute least favorite re-writing chore. Everything else pales in comparison to invisibly slipping a plot summary for a whole novel into the first five pages of the next one without resorting to “As you know, Bob …” or choking the reader on an indigestible lump of exposition.. Bleh.
And because this is a series, not a trilogy, I can’t even resort to the “Book One, Book Two” summaries that I did for The Secret Texts. Assuming Eos wants them, I want to do seven novels in the World Gates universe that will each pretty much stand on its own, but that will rely on shared worldbuilding and common characters — or a handful of common survivors, anyway, knowing my tendency to thin the herd about mid-book.
Haiku Novel, take two.