 In 1984, the new editor of Baen Books, Betsy Mitchell, called Martin to ask him if he had considered doing a collection of Haviland Tuf adventures.Martin, who had several favorite series characters like Solomon Kane, Elric, Nicholas van Rijn and Magnus Ridolph, had made an attempt to create such a character on his own in the 1970s with his Tuf stories.He was interested, but was too occupied with the writing of his next book, the never-completed novel "Black and White and Red All Over", which occupied most of his writing time the same year.