Top ten most difficult books for me to write:

#5 – Third Starlighter (Book #2 in Tales of Starlight)

I could list the Tales of Starlight series instead of a single book because all three had the same main reason for difficulty, though this one was the hardest of the three.

This series follows the adventures of Adrian Masters as he tries to free the human slaves on the planet of Starlight, a dragon-controlled world, while also trying to find his long-lost brother, Frederick.

Its companion series, Dragons of Starlight, follows Adrian’s younger brother, Jason, and the two series intertwine. The high level of difficulty came from making sure the two stories meshed accurately, which caused me to draw timelines and ugly maps to make sure all of the characters were in the right place at the right time.

I could have avoided this problem by dodging interactions between the characters in the two series, but I chose to insist on interaction because that made both into better stories.

The reason this series was harder than its companion series is that I wrote the Dragons of Starlight stories first without considering the intertwining, forcing me to do all of the meshing work in Tales of Starlight.

Also, I wrote one of my favorite scenes of all time in Third Starlighter, a conversation between two strong female characters in which they challenged each other with verbal swords. Those of you who have read it probably know what I’m talking about. It was fun but challenging.

This book is also my wife’s favorite of all of my books, so the struggle was well worth it.

Here is the purchase link for the series – https://www.theauthorschair.com/shopping/product-category/books/talesstarlight/

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