Blackbird was first brought into the world on July 6, 1999, and will finally be published on November 7, 2017. Quite a long journey, but to see only the bookends you miss much of what went into making it what it ended up being. Perhaps it’s only interesting to me, but then I’m probably the only one reading this, so that’s what this entry will be about.

My recollections of the earliest days of working on Blackbird are the most sketchy. Not only was it at least five computers ago, but the early...