Lash-Up

Author’s Note

I’ve lost track of the number of projects I’ve done with Chris Carlson: novels, games, articles, presentations, and other products that are lost in the fog of memory.

But there’s always something new. This is the first time we have “explored the frontiers of technology,” in other words, written about something that really hasn’t been done yet.

Writing Lash-Up was also a new (notice I didn’t say “novel”) process, because we were expanding a novella that I had written and was first published in 2001, as part of Steve Coonts’s anthology Combat (see the afterword). I was never happy with having to ignore so many plotlines, and Chris readily accepted the challenge of updating a ten-year-old story by someone else and adding material that would make it complete.

It was fun, although prying Chris’s fingers off the Engineer’s Handbook took a little time. My personal growth came in letting go of something I had created and trusting that Chris would improve it.

Chris did more than simply improve the story, and if you enjoy it, he should get at least half the credit. I could not have done this alone, and even if I could have, it would not have been as good, or as enjoyable to write.