(This should have been posted in March, 2012, when I realized that IC was going to have to be re-written, and could not be completely published yet. This was about the time that I realized that I had been wrong about the usefulness of an author's blog, and started seriously writing down what I should have been putting in it.)
I'm having problems with the Swarm author's group. Not their fault, as every one of them should rightfully be proud of their accomplishments and I'm the new guy. The underlying problem is that the owner, Thinking Horndog, originally envisioned this as a short series that allowed him to get some stress out as he went through some unpleasant times in his personal life. Apparently his series touched a nerve, and became popular enough that other authors started asking permission to play in his sandbox. He gave permission, moved on to other projects, and by his own admission sat back to enjoy reading Swarm stories that he didn't have to write.
The problem is that there was never any well-thought out background and historical outline that the various authors had to abide by. Each author wrote what he (or she) wanted to, and whenever the story called for it, something got invented. Of course the other authors would jump on the new stuff.
Time went on, and things started to get awkward. Joe can't write about the invention of (X) because Sally wrote about (X) being in use already in story (Y), and her version -already published, accepted, and thus 'canon'- doesn't do what he needs for his story. The authors don't just pass their writing around for help, they NEED to, to avoid inconsistencies.
And writing stuff that doesn't violate anything in any of the stories is getting harder. To my loyal readers, if there are any, I hereby apologize for how long this is taking.