The Tristan Smith Series started out as a single book which had more than a 1000 pages. I got the idea to write
a book in 2006 while reading a bed-time story to my son. My son:

Cory Hogan,

was my co-author and suggested the main character names to be used in the story, while I developed the plot. He didn't
like my plot and abandoned the venture about a week or two later. I wanted to create a story that had around nine truths
for every creative idea that I made up in the story. So I started to research topics that appear in the story to make
them as factual as possible. I've asked friends and neighbors for advice on everything from grammar to content to real
science. They happily volunteered their ideas, always remembering to ask when I was planning to publish.

My long time neighbor and good friend:

Mr. William Romo, is a retired Physics Professor from Carleton University here in Ottawa.

He helped to keep my ideas plausible and well grounded.

I hadn't planned on publishing the story, that is until another friend read the story and told me what he thought of it.

My good friend:

Mr. John Walker, who lives here in Ottawa, Ontario,

offered to spell check the 1000 pages for me. He likes science fiction and always offered an endless
supply of ideas to add into the story. When I asked him how he liked the story he replied with this excerpt from his
email on Sunday, March 15, 2015:

"By the way, the last part I read where Tristan got promoted to Commodore and the medal of honor, when you brought
Lilly in, that was real sweet!!! I cried the first time I read it, and again the second time, even though I knew what
was going to happen. Real powerful stuff! I'm sure women (and men) would love that."

This scene appears in the second book, "Tristan Smith and The Pirates Below", and was the reason I decided to publish the
Tristan Smith Series. If the story can move a married man with kids to tears, then I thought that others, like you, might
like it too.

The 1000-page version of Tristan Smith was originally copy edited in the Summer of 2015 by:

Mr. Jamie Bradley, an English Professor at Ottawa, University.

He said it needed a lot of work to be ready for publishing. He also suggested that it was to long and should be broken down
into a bunch of smaller books.

While he was editing it, I had approached a local publisher, Bundoran Press, for advice and learned that for unknown
authors, like myself, publishers were only interested in publishing books that were around 150 pages long. This presented
a problem since most of the character development happens at the beginning of the book. Following both their advice, I
decided to break the book up into six books and then proceeded to adjust them so they could stand on their own. This meant
that the origional first chapter would now be spread out over the six books and his flashback of his four tours of duty would
now be broken up to make the first four books.

Once I was finished, I had a science fiction appraisal done on Tristan Smith and The Alien Building Site in the Winter
of 2015-16 by:

Mrs. Suzanne Purkis, (suzanne@lucidediting.com) residing here in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.

She analyzed Tristan Smith and The Alien Building Site and returned it with a month and a half worth of work to do
in order to get it up to grade. Lucky for me I was between jobs and had the time to invest.

Upon completion, it required another copy edit. So I arranged for one to be done in the Winter/Spring of 2016 by:

Jeffrey Malecki, an English Master from Montreal, Quebec.

He took an axe to the story in an effort to shorten it, even to the point of suggesting the removal of stuff Mrs. Purkis
had said to add. Then, after having removed over 70 pages, he tells me it needed to be more exciting. So, I had to move the
Tavaskian encounter ahead and create a new chapter, as well as, improve on the first solar flare event. Now, with the story
being another 40 pages or so longer, it was definitely not suitable for paper publishing.

I found an artist:

Mr. Wenkui Yao, an Art Professor,

to draw the front cover.

When he was finished, I found another artist:

Miss Olivia Arden, a Graphic Artist from Ottawa, Ontario

to make the battleship insert and put the book cover together.