Konstantin Varouforos is a fun character for me to write. He isn’t quite entirely unlike me, but he certainly is less like me than many characters I write. I enjoy the mental stretch.

I spent an awful lot of time trying to decide what sort of voice to write these stories in, and what sort of people to focus on. Originally, I had it in mind to slice deeper into Varouforos’ crew, following some lower-level people. That worked well for We Sail Off To War, but turned out to be the wrong choice here. Varouforos and company may be mercenaries, but a lot of the fun in stories about mercenaries is the more complicated politics and the unusual missions, both of which are only really interesting from the top.