relationship with my own father. It is a curious comment on our

culture that this particular psychological profile, which to my

observation appears in both genders, is never called a "great man's daughter's syndrome." I wish that were only an artifact of the power of alliteration.

By the time I'd finished Shards I'd also developed the much more unexpected character of Konstantine Bothari. Bothari and Miles were a magnetic pairing. The very first image I had for the book that

eventually became The Warrior's Apprentice was the death of Bothari, initially visualized defending Miles from some yet-to-be-conceived enemy on a shuttleport tarmac, far from home. The

subsequent challenge to Miles, to survive without Bothari's quasi-

parental support, was inherent in that initial vision. So while the book was written, largely, from beginning to end (a method I'd learned to prefer while writing Shards), it was generated from the inside out.

I've described my usual writing process as scrambling from peak to

peak of inspiration through foggy valleys of despised logic.

Inspiration is better—when you can get it.

I began Warrior's exactly where it starts now; I made very few revisions to that first scene later. In the very first draft, however, Miles had a younger sister. Elena Bothari was originally named Nile, after the character of Nile Etland in a couple of James H. Schmitz

stories I'd read back in Analog magazine in the '60s. The sister was deleted before I got to Chapter 3, as I realized she and Elena/Nile occupied the same ecological niche. Test readers eventually convinced me that the name Nile for my heroine and Miles for my hero would be a copy-editor's nightmare later, if I ever achieved publication, so I regretfully gave up the name. Elena was never quite the same after the change, though. I'm still saving the name Nile.

Over the years I've found my book titles sometimes appear

simultaneously with their book ideas, sometimes partway through,

and sometimes, worst of all, never—books arrive at publication still sporting some dippy working title which then must be hastily

changed. I've had two or three different books with the working title of Miles to Go over the years. The Warrior's Apprentice, happily, is one of the first and best category. It is, of course, a pun on the old folk tale "The Sorcerer's Apprentice," so title, plot, and theme were all there from the first.

So I had set myself a comic plot structure with a tragedy at the

heart of its maze. How many screwball comedies have the sequence of the little white lie that grows and grows out of hand? It was also, I discovered shortly, a theological romance, since sequence by

sequence Miles was challenged by his then-three besetting sins: pride, imprudence, and despair. With these maps and compasses to guide

me through the foggy valleys, I began writing my way to the shifting center.

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