I procrastinated on this story. I wrote it in spurts, between October of 2001 and September of 2003. I had the general storyline in mind the entire time, but only in framework form. Had this story been written in less time closer together, it undoubtedly would be very different than the current manuscript is.
Had this all been completed in the final months of 2001, the ending would have been very different. Both towers still would have collapsed, but they both would have fallen for heroism, and Redwall would have emerged truly triumphant. The tone of the time was patriotic, and as much as I disagree with post-9-11 patriotism syndrome right now, I admit that I felt strongly for my country at the time.
Had this been entirely a work of mid-2003, well, I wouldn't have started it that late. I'd developed other ideas for commemoration, ones that I liked far better. Though I've finished this now, I currently don't feel that a Redwall setting is really suitable for a 9-11 metaphor. If I had started it that late, though, the twin towers certainly wouldn't have been evil. I don't recall why I decided they were to begin with, but to equate the World Trade Center to evil now strikes me as horribly wrong. But I could not change such an integral detail two thirds of the way into the story.
But this was a story written over a long time, and that allowed me to draw parallels to things that developed within that time. There, of course, had not been earlier intentions to allude to the unnecessary deaths of the Iraq war. And most notably, perhaps, Mattachin was not initially intended to represent George W. Bush. He just evolved into that, and it fit the direction the story had turned.
The whole story really was an evolution, both of events and of my views in relation to those events. Though I admittedly lost interest in this story for a while, I think it's stronger for that evolution. And yet, quite frankly, I'm pleased that it's reached its conclusion. It stopped being a tribute for me, and it started being a chronicling duty, and I can only hope I chronicled what a tribute need be.

11 September 2003