As the title suggests, the Others adds new characters to the story, and follows up on the revelations contained in the second chapter, revealing more hidden aspects of the Mission and our little settlement.
I think I decided fairly early on that six characters would not be enough to carry the story, and since Marta and Han were clearly not compatible, more potential mates were needed, especially if the Mission was to succeed in the secondary aim of founding a colony.
There was a long hiatus between the writing of the first chapter (originally conceived as as a stand-alone short story, entitled Light-out, and submitted to Analog Science Fiction & Fact in the autumn of 2013), and the decision to make it the basis of a novel. Needless to say the short story was rejected, and a cursory reading of the content of the magazine would probably have dissuaded me from submitting it in the first place. However, the feedback I received, although contained in a standard rejection letter, made a number of useful suggestions, including ensuring that the science used in the story was both plausible and accurate.
By the time I received the letter, I’d given up on the idea of a sequel to my first novel, a mainstream effort written under a different pen name, and decided that my next book would be a science fiction novel based on the characters, the scenario, and the concepts outlined in Light-out…
I wish I could say that I conceived the idea of a trilogy at this point, but the truth is I don’t remember. But when I revisited the short story and revised it to make more credible scientifically, I became increasingly convinced that I had something! Convinced, in fact, that I had created a world and characters with mileage in them, that I wanted to find out more about, and hopefully one that others would too…!
It may occur to you that, in certain aspects, a Children’s Crusade reads like a detective story, and this is very much how I view it! Alpha 5 is the problem, the mystery that needs to be solved, and I’m the detective; and the answers we discover along the way are the discoveries that I’ve made in the process of writing the series…
For fiction to work, it has to have a life of its own, dictated by the characters and the scenario. From dialogue comes character, and from character flow plot and action…
So in a sense the series writes itself, and in accepting that to be true, I’m consider myself privileged that this particular story has chosen me to be its medium…