The writing went smoothly through Books Two and Three, and then, somewhere in Book Four, one of Jeanette’s companions — my characters, being based on what I know about human behavior, have a real existence inside my head, and it was she, not me who did this — said that, if anything happened to Jeanette so that she couldn’t continue, maybe her surviving companions could help her successor. That surprised me, but that’s when I knew that I had not five Books, but six. The story was all there, in the back of my head with my muse, I just had to discover it. 

The original sketch for Book Five had a rather clumsy ending which permitted, or maybe even suggested continuation. I didn’t want anyone to write sequels. (Maybe they wouldn’t want to either.) This was my story, and I wanted it to end, however it did, when I ended it. The woman whom Jeanette would choose as her successor could finish the cycle so that there would be no way for someone to add anything more. 

I structured it the way I had the other Books, this time dividing the twenty chapters into five parts. I wrote it so that Leslie Ann Drover, my new hero, could solve the problem of what is evil, and what does it want, and how do you stop it, and bring the story to an absolute close. Now I had a good clean draft of all six Books.

I knew that what would eventually become The Black Ring was going to be big, and would have to be divided into volumes for ease of publication. But because of my experiences with writing a series, I decided to plan out all five Books at once. Each Book had a similar structure, of twenty chapters, which could be divided into parts or sections. For each chapter, there was a brief sketch of what was to be accomplished at the end, not how it started, or what might be happening. If I had only a beginning, or only an idea, I could too easily get lost and would not be able to finish. This had happened to me too many times before. But if I had an objective for each chapter, as when I had planned The Planet Masters, I would always know where I needed to go, no matter how much the chapter might wander along the way.

I wrote a rough draft of the first three parts of Book One, but I wasn’t really up to a project of that size, so I did some other things. Then Diane’s company sent us to England for almost three years. When we got back, I knew that I was now ready for The Black Ring, and I looked at those first chapters again. 

They were very rough, so I rewrote parts one and two, turning them into much better first drafts. But I had lost the roughs of the chapters of part three. I couldn’t remember what had happened in them, but I knew from the sketches how they were supposed to end, so I wrote them from scratch, as if for the first time, just getting to what the original endings had been about. 

Then I went on to part four. The writing was easy. The stories of each chapter just flowed out of the back of my head. I finished Book One and started Book Two. And though it also had twenty chapters, it would be all one part

It took me two weeks to write the “V” book, eighty thousand words. I called it Diana Pursued. They changed it to The Pursuit of Diana, which I felt was clumsy phrasing. 

I hated the book, and I hated writing it. The stress of meeting such a short deadline gave me a sharp ache in my left shoulder. For years the ache would come back whenever I got tense and stressed. But I was paid — it was a work for hire — and I got royalties for as long as it was in print. It sold more than ninety thousand copies in paperback (it’s not my fault), which made it an official best-seller. So, when you see “by best-selling author” on any of my traditionally published books, it’s true. Technically. Sigh.

I was asked to write a sequel, which was The Crivit Experiment, then another, Below the Threshold, then the show folded and that was the end of that. I got lots of remaindered copies very cheaply.

Another editor, at another time, asked me to write a sequel to Jewels of the Dragon. I did, and then a third, then I outlined seven more books. My editor cancelled the series after book three, and that was the end of that.

This is relevant to The Black Ring, I’ll get to it later.

I had seen only part of “V”, the first mini-series, while waiting for Diane in the airport, and after a few minutes I decided that I didn’t want to watch any more of it. I told my agent that I hadn’t seen it all, but that I would try to find someone who had recorded it and would get back to her. She gave me the whole weekend. A friend who had both mini-series on videotape loaned them to me. 

I made myself watch them over and over, despite severe problems I had with the Visitors coming to steal water from Earth when there was more than they could use in our cometary cloud, about their being shape-shifters, and about their coming from Sirius, which is a large hot blue-white star which has no planets any more, only a white dwarf companion, which would have destroyed any planets that once might have been there. I know that “V” was very popular, but I really, really didn’t like it. 

I called my agent Monday morning, and told her that I didn’t want to do it. She told me that it paid $7,500, which was about three times Diane’s annual stipend as a graduate student at UNC Chapel Hill. So I asked my agent, when did she want it? She said, within a month. I told her that I already had two weeks of other obligations. She said, “Take it or leave it, but decide now.” I took it.

What might a hero be like, who was the opposite of my over-developed monster, the opposite of someone like Arnold Schwarzenegger, on steroids or not. And it came to me in a flash of inspiration. It could be someone like a young Sally Field. I knew at once that this was right. 

She would be small, young, overprotected as a child, briefly married but recently widowed, and now on her own. Every problem presented to her would be a challenge. Everything in her life would be a challenge. 

And those otherworldly places, where powers she didn’t understand would send her, to do she knew not what until she got to it, would present her with strong moral choices, and problems which would not in any way be easy for her to find solutions. I as the author might have difficulties with that as well. 

I sat down and wrote rough drafts of what turned out to be the first three parts of Book One, Zhanai’degau. And stopped there, because I had agreed to write, at the request of my agent, the Pursuit of Dianna (not my title), based on the TV series “V”, which I despised.

My fantasies about my hero Delgado continued on my walks around town, usually to three drugstores, which I visited so that I could check the spin-racks for science fiction that I didn’t own yet. Back in those days I could find some books for twenty five cents. My fantasies also kept me occupied while riding with my parents to visit my father’s family in North Dakota. The drive, back then, took two nights each way. 

But I got bored with my fantasy hero. He was like one of those guys who overdevelop on steroids, but with extra body parts like wings and horns and other things — all very embarrassing as I write this — in an effort to make him even more powerful. But he was boring. He could take his thirty pound sword (most real broadswords weigh less than three pounds), walk into the trouble spot, hack and slash and destroy everything, and walk out. No more problem (like in The Dirty Pair). And there was no challenge.

My heroic fantasy was no fun any more. What could I do to make it interesting again?

My daytime fantasies about the hero continued for years. His name was Delgado, because of my fascination with Spanish names at that time. These were not real stories, so much as events and episodes. As time passed, my hero became bigger, stronger, eventually a grotesque superhero, who wasn’t really super at all, just a teen-age boy’s wish-fulfillment fantasy. Eventually, after I had published other books, I wrote something long enough to be called a novel, and sent it to my agent. She rejected it, which was the right thing to do. 

Nonetheless, I decided to write a sequel, and then another, then revise the first book and try again. The sequels, hand-written on the back of wide-format computer paper — which I had been given since I couldn’t afford regular paper — amounted to about a hundred fifty thousand words each, and were so bad that, when I some years later looked at them again, I literally, not “figuratively,” could not read them. Some time after that, since I needed the shelf space, I threw the sequels out. Garbage is garbage after all, and after a while it begins to stink. The original story was rejected again, and now is lost. Maybe that’s just as well.

I got the inspiration for The Black Ring in my early teens, when I had a dream in which I was a hero in some kind of story. (A version of that dream is in Book One, Part Four, Chapter 14, near the beginning of “The Cottage on the Border”.) I had never been a hero in my dreams or fantasies — and certainly not in real life — and I never had another dream about being a hero, though I have sometimes assumed the role of someone other than me.

The dream persisted in the back of my mind for a long time, as no other dream had done. The idea of being a hero entered my fantasies for the first time, which had never never been about being a hero before. I eventually started writing down a lot of ideas — strange lands, monsters, companions, enemies, modes of transportation, weapons — and over the years filled several small notebooks. I decided, after ten or twelve years or so, to compile them all into a single notebook, and threw the originals away. When I referred to the compilation later, I found that I had tightened too much, and had left out alternates and details which I now wanted. I should have kept the originals.

I have been working on preparing a second edition of The Black Ring since September 6, 2020. I’m not there yet, but the end is in sight, in the not too distant future.

Had it been a second edition of just one book — say A Thing Forgotten, which needs a corrected second edition — it could have been done easily, in just a week or two. But The Black Ring is six volumes in a numbered series, which adds complications at Amazon and at Bowker (where you get ISBNs) and possibly at the U.S. Copyright Office as well. And each book needed lots of re-readings and corrections and revisions. And formatting. And cover adjustments. Sigh.

But it is coming along. After it’s done, I would like to start something new. Or get back to Star Kings, or The Empty House. But I intend to take an extended break first.