Writing Book Two Changed the Way I See Book One

When I finished The Executor’s Silence, I believed I understood the story I had written.

I did.

But not completely.

That realization came while writing The Executor’s Discovery.

A strange thing happens when a story becomes a series. The first book no longer exists entirely on its own. Decisions that once seemed isolated begin casting longer shadows. Questions acquire new meaning. Details that appeared small reveal themselves as foundations.

The story behind the story begins to emerge.

I have said before that writing Discovery sometimes feels like discovering what Silence was really about.

I do not mean that the first book was written without direction.

Quite the opposite.

The structure was there.

The relationships were there.

The questions were there.

But writing the next part of the story forced me to look backward with information I did not possess when I began.

In that sense, the author can experience something similar to the reader.

We both discover that what came before may mean something different once we understand what comes after.

That idea is central to The Executor Series.

Elias Ward does not simply acquire new information.

He is repeatedly forced to reconsider old information.

A memory does not change.

Its meaning can.

A decision does not change.

Our understanding of why it was made can.

A person’s actions remain exactly what they were.

But context can transform the way we see them.

I think that is true far beyond fiction.

We look back on our parents differently as we grow older.

We reconsider decisions once we understand the circumstances surrounding them.

We recognize sacrifices we were too young to notice.

Sometimes we forgive.

Sometimes we become less certain.

Sometimes the past becomes more complicated precisely because we understand it better.

Writing The Executor’s Discovery has done something similar for me as an author.

It has not changed The Executor’s Silence.

It has revealed more of its architecture.

And perhaps that is what a continuing story should do.

Not simply add another chapter to what came before.

But make us look back and realize that something was already taking shape before we knew enough to see it.

The story did not change.

The view did.

— Thomas