Dear Reader,
If you're in a position like I am and you're working on multiple books, it is good to keep a log of the things you invent and introduce into your books. My log is a disaster and spread across multiple notebooks. I'm trying to fix that, it's not working so great. But, there are others out there with wonderfully detailed notes. In your log, it is good to note the description and pertinent qualities of your special things. It is also good practice to note where it shows up in your story and under what conditions it arises. This helps prevent you from having your flaming brass dragon turn into a flaming glass dragon (unless that is a planned plot twist).
Keeping a log of major setting details helps when you are choosing what elements from previous books to incorporate and carry forward into the next books. We've all read books that were a bit cavalier about this and are confused by how these things happened to change between books. If you keep a log, you can reference it at any time you are working to add details, note influence on plot arcs, and generally keep your information about the setting details up to date as you are working.
Just don't do it across a four inch stack of notebooks, please. I'm still sorting out that mess. Ah, life before computers. When everything went into notebooks. Now I'm working to consolidate it into one source. It's not going so great because it's a jumbled mess. I might wind up using Camp NaNoWriMo this year to work on fixing that mess.
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