I wanted to write a short blog on canon in the TCOTU galaxy. It’s surprising to sit back and realize just how much history the stories to date have established. In the five books of the original This Corner of the Universe series, a major war redefines borders, a corporate conflict shifts the fundamentals of corporate warfare, and even an alien race is introduced.  Those books also tease history of the Brevic Republic and the Secession Wars that splintered the Solarian Federation.

If you’ve been following my blogs recently, it’s no secret that the first part of the new book, Hero of the Republic, covers portions of the Brevic-Hollaran conflict. In fact, one battle in HOTR is well-covered in the original series, as different threads of history often intersect. That provided an enormous challenge to not only write about the battle in a new and interesting way in the new book, but also pay proper respect to the original series and the canon it created.

I paid fanatical attention to ensure that regardless of what I wrote in Hero of the Republic, it would never conflict with the past canon of the TCOTU series. I think I’ve succeeded. Fortunately, when I wrote the first series, I always tried to keep an eye on the future.  Hopefully that helped me write about the Brevic-Hollaran War from a completely different perspective (the young Caden Twist’s) than the characters of the original series.

I hope readers of the first series find it not only entertaining and interesting but also rewarding to see how some of the events that happen or are discussed in those books are interpreted differently in HOTR and beyond… not because the canon of those events changes but because new characters are seeing those events unfold with different points of view.

Of course, Hero of the Republic isn’t just a rehash of the Brevic-Hollaran conflict. It covers much more than that, ranging from the corporate systems inside the Lesser Magellanic Arm to the General Council on Bree, and culminates with the Republic’s initiative to exact revenge upon the Commonwealth.

On a side note, the editing process for the new book is nearing completion. Pushing the Publish button is still on track for early September, the first or second full week of that month.