so how do you count novel years? Does a novel get born and then age like fine wine, and only gets better with age…. or is it lucky if it still holds its own a year after its publication date? Do novels age in our years, in Great Dane years (where an 8-year-old dog is starting to fade from old age) or new tech (where everything is obsolete within a handful of years), or Galapagos tortoise years where you’re still meeting individuals going strong in their 150’s…?

I ask for a reason – my first solid high fantasy novel (there are stories here, and I will likely tell them, but not necessarily here and now…) was written [mumble] years ago, back when I was still technically a “scientist”, and originally published at the dawn of this millennium. It weighed in at a quarter-million words, and the original publisher squealed “split that puppy!” when faced with this mammoth manuscript and thus the novel – written as a single volume and always meant to stand as one – got published as a duology, and released in two volumes. In New Zealand, where it first appeared, those two books were entitled “Changer of Days Vol 1” and “Changer of Days Vol 2”, which made sense. When time came to re-release them in the states, they decided they wanted different titles. I vividly remember a lunch I had with my editor at the time where we noodled titles for the first volume (hte second would stay “changer of days”) and in the end coming up with a title-by-committee which neither of us loved but which would have to do for the circumstances, “The Hidden Queen”. So that (“The Hidden Queen”/”Changer of Days”) were their USA identities (still two books).

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