Vasa, Gustav II Adolf
King of Sweden; Emperor of the United States of Europe; also known as Gustavus Adolphus.
Vasa, Kristina
Daughter and heir of Gustav II Adolf.
Vasa, Wladyslaw IV
King of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.
Walczak, Waclaw
Leader of the Polish CoC contingent in Dresden.
Wettin, Wilhelm
Prime Minister of the USE; leader of the Crown Loyalist Party (formerly Saxe-Weimar, Wilhelm IV, Duke of).
Wojtowicz, Jozef
Nephew of Grand Hetman Koniecpolski; head of Polish intelligence in the USE.
Afterword
The 1632 series, also sometimes called the Ring of Fire series, is now up to nine novels and nine anthologies of short fiction. That’s what has been produced in paper editions. There is also a bi-monthly electronic magazine devoted to the series, the Grantville Gazette. As of the month this novel comes out, the magazine will have published thirty-four issues. If you measure things by word count, which is how authors tend to think, almost three million words have so far been published in paper editions—1,674,000 words in the novels and 1,312,000 in the anthologies. A little over two million words have also been published in purely electronic format in Gazette stories and articles, not counting the stories and articles that were reissued in paper editions.
About five million words, all told. To make things still more complicated, the story line of the series is very far from linear. The 1632 series isn’t so much “a” story as it is a complex of stories. (See below for my suggestion for the order in which to read the various volumes.) Any given character is likely to weave in and out of both novels and short fiction, in stories which are often written by several different authors or collaborations of authors.
To give an example of a character who appears in this novel:
Denise Beasley’s best friend Minnie Hugelmair was first introduced into the series in Virginia DeMarce’s story in the first Grantville Gazette paper edition, “The Rudolstadt Colloquy.” Thereafter, she reappears in Virginia’s “Mule ‘Round the World” (Grantville Gazette #7, electronic edition; Gorg Huff and Paula Goodlett’s “Trommler Records” (in the same electronic issue of the Gazette); my story “The Austro-Hungarian Connection” in Ring of Fire II; Wood Hughes, “Turn Your Radio On, Episode Three” (GG #21, electronic edition); Virginia DeMarce, “Franconia! Parts II and III,” (GG #25, electronic edition); my story “Steady Girl” in Grantville Gazette V (paper edition); Eric Flint and Virginia DeMarce, 1635: The Dreeson Incident; Virginia DeMarce, “Or the Horse May Learn to Sing” (GG #28, electronic edition; and my 1635: The Eastern Front. In some of these stories she is simply mentioned, but even so her appearance is a matter of record.
People ask me rather frequently: “How do you keep track of all that?”
The answer is: I don’t.
I couldn’t possibly keep track of it. The 1632 series began with the publication of my novel 1632 in February of 2000. But years ago it became transformed into a collective enterprise. I remain the major author in the series, of course. All of the novels are either written or co-authored by me, and I have stories in all but one of the anthologies. (The one exception is 1635: The Tangled Web. The stories in that anthology are all written by Virginia DeMarce.) And I have the final say-so over anything that gets published as an editor, or as the publisher, in the case of the electronic magazine.
The analogy I tend to think of is that I’m the old-style conductor of a piano concerto, where I’m both the pianist and the conductor.
Still, there is no way I could possibly keep track of everything. I rely heavily on a group of people who consist of the editorial board of the Gazette—that’s the editor herself, Paula Goodlett, along with Karen Bergstralh, Laura Runkle and Rick Boatright—and many of the authors who have been published frequently in the series. Those include Virginia DeMarce, Iver Cooper, Kerryn Offord, Walt Boyes, Gorg Huff, David Carrico, Kim Mackey and Chuck Gannon.
I need to take the time here to thank all of them once again.
In addition, at any given time, many other people have helped me with specific issues. For this volume and the one which preceded it, 1635: The Eastern Front, I need to extend special thanks to two people:
Danita Ewing provided me with a great deal of help with the medical issues involved with Gustav Adolf’s head injury and the resulting symptoms.
Stanley Roberts has been a big help with Ottoman history, which is a particularly thorny and difficult one for authors of historical fiction. He also wrote the first draft of what became Chapter 30 of this novel. I rewrote that draft and expanded it, but most of Stanley’s prose remains in the text as he originally wrote it.