Sunday, March 3, 2019

Dragons of Autumn Twilight Backstory

For those fans of the Dragonlance series, Margaret Weis has reminisced on her Facebook page about the start of the books and some of the backstory behind the publication of Dragons of Autumn Twilight.

TSR, which published the Dragonlance series originally commissioned an author, whose name Weiss does not (or will not) remember to write the books.. The unnamed author did such a poor job on the book that Weis feared TSR would drop the series. She and Hickman wrote the first five chapters over a weekend and turned it over to their editor, Jean Black, who read it only so that she would not hurt their feelings. Black loved what they had written, though, and gave them a contract.

However, Random House, which was TSR's distributor to the book trade, did not have high expectations for the book, telling TSR that, because Weis and Hickman were unknown authors, to not expect more than the first book to sell. TSR, taking this to heart, then pushed Weis and Hickman to end the book on an upbeat note with the wedding of Goldmoon and Riverwind instead of the planned ending, the discovery of the Hammer of Kharas.


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