Paksworld

“As you know…” I’ve been working on, and re-working on, and re-RE-working on Horngard I.  Recovering the ability to write fiction has not meant (alas!!) recovering the ability to do two or three layers of revision at once.  Revision has been a fairly arduous process of fixing this bit, then that bit, than then this other bit, one at a time, even when the things to be fixed were in the same sentence or paragraph.   It is getting better, but not as fast as I want.

But–on the bright side–Horngard I has a new first chapter that is MUCH better than the previous one in multiple ways (characterization, plot, etc.)  AND a new ending section that solves a problem several people who’d seen it had noted.

Even so both of these fragments had to be rewritten several times in several days.  But to celebrate the completion (I hope) of the first chapter and the last, here are a few snippets

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From Chapter One:

Where: near or in Valdaire, in Aarenis, morning.  Who: Camwyn, 21 yo, formerly Camwyn Mahieran, crown prince of Tsaia

Camwyn resented Dragon ignoring his own wishes, and “not wise yet” didn’t help. Someday, he would find out where he had come from.  Someday he would find out if his family still wanted him.  Grateful as he was, he would not give up that hope for Dragon’s dream.

Where: coming down from the mountain pass from Tsaia to Aarenis, midday.  Who: Aris Marrakai, 18 yo, one of four squires to Duke Arcolin

He let himself drift into the hope he’d clung to for years, and hidden from his disapproving father: finding his best friend, Prince Camwyn, missing for more than five years.  Have time and freedom for his search.  Thus: be a courier, carrying messages for the Duke   from city to city on a fast, tireless horse, ridden by a young man of good breeding and impeccable reputation, the squire who never got into trouble.

Where: lunchtime at The Golden Fish, Valdaire.  Who: Aesil M’dierra, Golden Company owner/commander

She noticed a handsome dark-eyed stranger, a young man she’d never seen before, at the front window table, richly dressed in bold yellow and black over mail. A visiting princeling from the north?  Or perhaps from Fallo or one of the Immerhoft ports?  A padded coif on his head hid his hair.

Where: later lunchtime at The Golden Fish    Who: Aesil M’dierra,   Gurtnor Sartanits, Blue Company owner/commander

She recognized Gurtnor Sartanits, owner and commander of Blue Company, mail under his blue surcoat, tall boots folded to knee height, a dagger hilt showing in each, sword  on one side and a wide-bladed short sword on the other.  He strode in as if he owned the inn. Behind him were two of his captains, also wearing mail, spurred boots, and ample weaponry.

Sartanits’ smile, when he spotted her, had no friendliness in it, and his voice oozed condescension.  “Commander M’dierra!  Fancy meeting you here without your faithful Arcolin.  Found someone less ancient, have you?…”

One of these four will be dead by the end of the book, one accused of murder and under presumed sentence of death, one very badly wounded, one about to announce retirement.

To avoid spoilers, you’ll have to wait to see a snippet from the end, if I can find one that doesn’t reveal too much.  Chapter One, after a last change this morning, should be stable from here on.

In the limbo of “book ms with editor” and while working to get the house in more order (it’s working; it’s not done yet) , I’ve now finished grooming two stories….and instead of working on another known-but-needing-to-be-recovered-mentally since the computer problems, a NEW one popped up yesterday. Totally knew.  Strange.  I told it “I’ll take notes, but you’re down the list.  You’ll need to wait for a full treatment.”  Story grabbed my brain and dragged it down the rabbit hole of Storyland.

So now “Flawed Swords” is a Thing.  Not a finished Thing, but a Thing with a title and several pages and a lot of emotional Baggage.

It better cooperate and turn out to be a decent story, or I may institute a “whack-a-mole” policy for intrusive story ideas.  (As if that would work!)

The finished stories, in the new folder of Paksworld stories, are “Bank Transfer” and “Destinies.”  The latter follows “Consequences” in DEEDS OF YOUTH.

This coming weekend (3/22 to 3/24)  I’ll be traveling to Dallas to meet with my sabre fencing coach to clear up some things I didn’t get solid during his workshop here on March 2.  I have always been slow to learn footwork (in dance and in fencing) and got very mixed up that day.  Russ said (in both video and person) that difficulties often do arise when previous training crosses current training, and definitely the rapier footwork keeps invading my brain while I’m trying to do the sabre footwork.   Because the train schedule is what it is, the trip will take up 3 days, with two nights in a hotel.  Kate, my tech and organizational person, is coming along, so it should be fun in more than one way.   (Ten years ago, I could’ve driven up.  But even then driving into Dallas and back from here was an exhausting trip…now it’s impossible.  Vision, and the mental effects of concussion…can’t concentrate that long, at the level needed for driving on I-35.)  So the train.

The first chapter of Horngard I is now tighter, cleaner, more direct, less allusive.  Starts in POV of major character.  Sets out the initial situation directly.  Introduces second POV character, hours later than the original start.   Better, in other words.  I’m now charging through the other chapters (agent had a copy I’d sent him in October; I’d lost my copies here, as you know, so it was seeing it very fresh indeed.)    Every place that my eyelids sag (before midnight; sagging at midnight is normal.  Right now I’m waiting for the dryer to finish with a load of wash that suddenly had to be done at about 10:30 pm.)

For instance, Gwennothlin Marrakai is taking her youngest brother Julyan on a trip and includes moving some horses from the Marrakai estate somewhere else.  I had, in the previous file, a sketch map of the journey, a timeline, a note of every horse, its name, its breeding, its color, its size.   Today I was reading along, early in that journey and they stopped for lunch and then…I spent most of a paragraph on the horses.  Not interesting stuff about the horses, not enlivening details that also show I know what I’m describing, but…she helps Julyan get on the horse she wants him to ride that afternoon, and in the process of that tells the reader (only some of whom will care) the horse’s name, breeding, color, and size.  Does any of this matter at any point in the story?  No. Does Julyan care?  No.  I found myself mentally staring at the 11 year old kid, who darn well ought to be able to mount that horse without help, and at the horse (which is not going to DO anything remarkable at any point!) and erased a paragraph.  After lunch they started off upstream on the trail.   It’s not about a mare named Daisy.  It IS about one of the horses in particular, but right now they’re going to ride south, upstream, day after day until they’re….never mind.  Lips are sealed.  THAT bit has details that matter.

More of that section–the travel–will also come out because it’s a separate sort of sequence that ties into the main sequence down the line.   “The Chainsaw of Correction…” is snarling in my ear.

On the other hand, I’m still very happy with the battle scenes.  Gritty.

Writerly egos really do work this way.  Inspired by the review copy of DEEDS OF YOUTH,  I was able to finish the sequel to “Consequences” (last story in that volume) yesterday.  MUCH faster than I finished the first one of the pair.  Together they cover the entirety of Kieri Phelan’s first independent mercenary command.  The original version I wrote in the neighborhood of 35 years ago hasn’t been found, so I was reconstructing from my memory of it.   I’m sure it’s not an accurate reconstruction, but nobody else knows the original at all.  Ha.  What you’ll finally get, when the collection after the new collection comes out, is  all there is.

An ego-correction was finding out, while doing what I thought was the final revision, that I had *reversed two characters’ names.”  Between stories.  Within weeks of having re-read “Consequences”.    Yes, OK, I’m good enough to write an exciting story in less than two weeks, a story that involves blocking out a clash of militaries (size, location, terrain, opposing forces’ different weapons, mobility, background of military theory for each, etc.)  and collapsing all the details the writer then knows into just the ones the *reader* needs to know to grasp what’s happening, the sequence of events, the personalities and back stories of the POV characters, and fitting all that into less than 7500 words at most.   But I’m not apparently good enough to noticed that between “Consequences” and (its current name, this may change) “Unintended,”  Crown Prince G-‘s name turns into younger Prince H-‘s name.

All fixed now.  G- is back to being G- across the narrow temporal gulf between reading story C and writing story U.   Be sure that from now on in I will be looking harder when writing subsequent related stories to existing stories, and doing the name check *earlier* in the process.   First-readers of story U liked it a lot.  I still like it a lot today, having spent last night and today cleaning it up.  Is it spotless and shiny, all ready for its debut later?  I’ll know better after letting the resident Nitpicker at it.  Meanwhile, a snippet.

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“Get a horse,” the king said.  “A good one.”

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Meanwhile, in the daily life stuff, it’s been very, VERY hot so I’m feeding horses later and later in the evening and today moved the morning feed up to “nearly all hard feed in the morning because it’s cooler and better for them.”

A US Senator (former football coach, whoop-te-do) is taking out his spite on the Department of Defense by blocking all promotions that require Senate approval and thus leaving many commands without a commander when the previous one reached legal retirement age.  Including my branch, the Marines, who are without a Commandant for the first time in over 100 years.  (And, dear friends, you really truly do not want to leave the Marines to their own devices without a solid command structure.  You don’t want to leave ANY military that way, but we have particularly…strong…well…our nickname with at least one other branch is Uncle Sam’s Misquided Children, and our reputation is “If you want something absolutely totally destroyed, call in the Marines.”  I, of course, am now a sweet old lady, perfectly harmless except for the razor edge on tongue and pen.

I called said Senator’s Senate office today and gave a brief and non-profane description of his misdeeds (this is only one of them; the guy’s a raging racist and a contributor to the J6 insurrection) before calling on him to resign.  He won’t, of course, but this is what I can do legally, for now.  Let him know he’s not the strong noble hero he thinks he is but a pissant southern neo-Confederate who broke his oath of office, tried to overturn the government, and has pissed off a Marine veteran.  At least one.  Sure there’s more.   I’m feeling that the Senator, who never served in any branch, should perhaps contemplate the effect of Marines minus a complete command structure on something closer to his heart than the rest of the country, since he doesn’t care about the rest of the country, just his billionaire donors and the white folks in his home state.  Needs to be reminded that the Senate doesn’t command the military.  That’s an executive function, and it needs a whole, unbroken, chain of command from POTUS on down to the lowest level just-out-of-boot-camp E-1.

So I think I need to call his office *daily* with things he clearly doesn’t know, and needs to know, about the real, serious, deal it is to stand in the way of the Marines having a  Commandant.  His name, in case you don’t know it, is Tommy Tuberville, and he pronounced it TUBBER-vill.  Wouldn’t want to say a Senator’s name wrong, would we?  (Rubber-Tubber?  Flubber-Tubber?)  I leave the cussing out to the senior NCOs, who are superb at it (an art form, once they’re up in grade)  and recommend that former officers and lower grade enlisted just list any four or eight of his “errors” as politely as possible within the need to make it clear what a [redacted] he is.

Recovery from fall…much better.  Some stitches out, others will be soon.  Only one scab chunk left, but it’s starting to itch.

Both R- and I have new machines that are up and running;  new headphones that are more comfortable with better sound (so we can each enjoy our own favorite music, You Tube sites, etc.) without bothering the other.)  (Yes, it’s luxury.)   The complete tech overhaul is well along; there’s still some more stuff (I still don’t have a new printer; the Faure Requiem is still stuck in old machine’s CD drive, the RAM upgrade wasn’t accepted by new machine, data recovery will, I hope, pull all the old photos off old machine’s disk, but we’ll see.  But the improvement so far is MAJOR.

I’m working on some new material related to Horngard I, still uncertain if it will fit in Horngard II or be pulled out into a separate story/novella.  Happy with the feel.   I didn’t lose consciousness, even momentarily, in the faceplant, but I hit hard enough to be stunned (still sore places on bones that met the sidewalk) and there were little blinks of “not there” time from the 4 hours in the hospital, which after the effect of the 2018 concussion had me worried.  Not now.  I’ve read some seriously technical material  in two different journals and understood it fully and the writing itself tells me the brain’s healthy…or at least functional.  2018-2022 showed me I can’t write coherent, hangs-together fiction if the brain is seriously upset.  In fact, in 2018, I could barely write a coherent paragraph describing a current activity at first…so being able to write about merchants on a journey is reassuring.

Now it’s feed time for the critters.  We had an inch of rain we very much needed last night.

…I don’t yet have permission to reveal it, and I can’t figure out how to make it show up in an email (did a test with a friend…got the link but it did not work)  and clicking on the image itself, with this computer, doesn’t yield the “copy image” choice.  It just enlarges or goes back to the other size.

What cover? you ask.  The cover for Deeds of Youth.  Tara, the designer, found a really good green-leather background for it, that will go with the dark red of Deeds of Honor.  Cover uses the same font for the title, the gold stuff is all gold just as it was, and between the change of title and a II  added to the line “paksenarrion world stories” people should not confuse I and II.  When I get permission to share, and when I have loaded Paint Shop Pro into this computer so I can play with images in the software, I’ll post it.  I like it a lot!

Meanwhile, the busy (but not organized) brain has worked out why King Mikeli’s being so stubborn about something in Horngard I, and who can unstick him a couple of weeks earlier, thus not having a long, long stretch that my agent thinks is dull for readers rather than tedious for one of teh characters.  Of course Dragon’s quick idea to mmph the ;ukmph into the xzllz is still a bit of a problem….and creates other problems, which is always good for the plot unless it convinces readers it’s totally impossibly stupid and a creature like Dragon would never think of it.  (Oh, yes he would.  Did.)

Will there be other exciting news over the next few weeks?  Probably not, but not *certainly* not.  Agent is headed for the London Book Fair later this month for a couple of weeks of connecting with his foreign (to us) fellow agents in Europe and getting their input.  He’ll be at the Nebulas in Anaheim not long after he gets back.   I’ll be working on that little blobby bit  in Horngard I and also posting more.

The seven stories of Deeds of Youth have been combed over and checked again and again; the two that were serialized here have had a few minor changes made.  One has never been “out in public” yet.  Those three (two seen in the blog, one never) will get a professional polish from a copy editor; the other four, suppposedly (I HOPE!) clean enough copies are as they appeared in the anthologies.  I’m hoping Agent agrees to use the same basic cover design with the new title and the background in green “antique-leather) behind the gold lettering.  I do not yet have a release date, but I expect to have the date within a few weeks (that’s how it happened last time) and it should be out this year for sure.

Back to working on Horngard I.

Between the ice storm, the aftermath of the ice storm (heavy rain onto the melted ice) , some power outages and a total failure of plumbing, the past few weeks have been hectic and requiered a lot of “adjustment” to daily life.   Having both toilets nonfunctional for a week + days, and the septic tank having to be pumped, and such…not the most fun in the world.  But we’re lucky that it’s now back together and functioning.

With Horngard I with my agent, Horngard II is up for some work, even though I have Other Things that must be dealt with.  Over the weekend (M-‘s birthday weekend, so less writing time, in addition to struggling with a computer/printer difficulty and a .pdf file difficulty) and today, Horngard II has gained 4000 words without excessive effort or loss of sleep.  I hope it continues to behave like #1 and roll itself out in front of me.  And if it doesn’t…I’ll cope.

Right now (this instant) it’s at 17,289 words and 81 pages.   The words before about 75-100 pages are very…fragile, vulnerable to alteration or even abandonment later.  For a middle book, in particular, as I expect this one to be, there’s a lot of mist and fog and not much to see from the beginning, which is back down from the height the first book reached.  Characters are alive, vivid, full of themselves right now.  Story itself is eager to get to the next “good stuff,” but in that hurry is quite capable of running madly ahead and off the cliff into a nasty ravine of “it never happened, go back and write something different.”  That happens once a book at least anyway, so though I don’t LIKE it, it’s not a really serious problem.

So Horngard II is alive, moving, has withstood its first long interruption (when working on agent’s suggestions, and all that suggests it will follow its older sibling and continue to grow with its own vigor.

The most difficult of the “fixes” to the book my agent suggested was the result of a decision I made after the first couple of tries at “braiding” the POVS  of multiple people in multiple places who arrive at a very critical point in time and space together did not work–left things choppy and confusing.

I elected to put all of one POV group first and all the second POV group afterwards.  And *that* didn’t work either, my agent said (correctly said, I insist.)

Fixing it has not been easy and I’m not entirely sure now that it does what I want (especially since it added words to an already long book to get the rearranged stuff eased in, smoothed, and feeling like they “grew in place.” )

It reads better to me, but then I’m the person who wrote it and screwed that up in the first place.

I have multiple charts, notes, and attempts at doing it piece by tiny piece…the mosaic has to make the overall picture that includes high anxiety in three groups of people and impatience and frustration in the fourth group.   Looking back over the previous books, especially the ones in series, I see that I started out writing *somewhat* simpler books (not shorter…my first was very, very large, but not as complex all over as this one.)   And as soon as I learned how to do something more technically difficult…whammo, there it was in the next book (or the same book rewritten on the fly.)

I swore after one of the Familias Regnant books that had 12 major POVs scattered across part of a galaxy, most of them going somewhere rapidly in a ship, and having to be at the right place at the right time to execute their plot effect here…and then there…and then…etc., that I’d never have that many  plot-critical POVs again.  Ha.  I don’t even count anymore.  Keeping track of them was exciting in the sense of juggling explosives while dancing on a high wire…now it’s “Here we go again.”

The difference in Paksworld is that lack of fast, easy communication between the parties in motion.  Who knows what when always matters, but when you have to remember that there are no links, no phones, no computers, no satellite navigation aids…and then allow for “normal” weather patterns and the effect of them on unpaved roads traveled by humans on foot or riding animals or being hauled in wheeled vehicles by same…it’s…tricky.  No clocks either.  No longitude & latitude.  There are stars, but in a forest in the rainstorm, you can’t see them.

One more day of travel out of sight of the nexus point where all must come together.  One more day for those in the tunnel to endure…

Brahms’ German Requiem is the right music for this. I’ve tried other things but this (and the Faure Requiem for part of the earlier sections of the book) particular requiem carries the tension, the anxiety, the stark fear, the determination in the music itself and keeps me from sliding off into something easier to write.  The unearthly beauty of some passages also fits–around the story is a stunningly beautiful setting, dramatic in itself, inspired by and then developed from a photo I saw online years ago.   I moved a mountain range in behind it, added a plausible region of geology in front of it, and added the appropriate vegetation, then had the rockfolk go to work on it.

A snippet:

“Now,” Regar said, when he’d caught enough of the enemy’s cadence to be certain of the timing, and his men cut the ropes on their side.  The tower swung out away from the cliff all in one swoop, landing on the burning pinpigs, crushing them, and landing on some of the enemy who’d been straining to pull it down.  Fire spread quickly.

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If I haven’t mentioned the recording, here is is on YouTube:

So all the stages of revision (the big three) got done and in the process of the last one I realized that I’d lost something somewhere…cut & didn’t paste, and since I’d chosen “cut” the something was long gone lost.  I’d have to write it again.  Which I did one day this past week and I like it better than the first version.   Then I went on with the spit-polishing of the surface and finished that Friday.  Yesterday morning, Saturday, I was primed for a day of loafing–or at least working on other things like having actual *space* in the study, nothing on the floor (!!!) instead of the Useful Books now there, along with the many not-useful things.

But wait!  Something was stirring.  Something had hold of my brain and was yanking at me.  “Come here!  Don’t do that!  Come HERE and sit DOWN and put fingers on the keyboard and get going!!!”

And out came…the start of NewBook II or Horngard II.   “But, but, but,” I stammered.  “I have other things to do!  I need to go do this, and go do that, and go do the other thing, lots of things have gone undone since I started NewBook I!”

And the book said “Nonsense.  Keep going.”  Ten pages later that was it for the day.

It’s not even noon yet and another ten pages has appeared in the file.

“But I have to do these things…”

“No, you don’t.  Shut up, quit arguing, and get going…this train is leaving the station, toot-toot-toot, and you’d better be on it or be sorry.”

“But I haven’t heard back from my agent, and shouldn’t I wait until…?”

“NO!”

“But there’s a weather change and it might finally rain and I need to spread seed, and…”

“NO!”

You know what’s really, really, really fun…is the feel of being on a fast-moving book with the story pouring into your head and out through your fingers.  Even if you’re eating unhealthy food, your neck hurts, your finger joints are beginning to burn, one leg’s going to sleep…it’s really, really fun to have live characters doing their thing right there in front of you, and the book’s  plot daemon prodding you in the ribs: “Hurry up!  Get that bit—right there–that’s good, keep going, don’t stop, yeah!!!”

I do have to go feed horses their lunch, even if the book’s hollering at me.  I’ll be back.  How many pages today?  I have no idea.  What’s going to happen?  I have no idea except that I’ll be spending time in this chair and more Story will be in the file. and I’ll be grinning at times and tapping my foot and thinking how very lucky I am in some back corner of my mind while the rest is occupied playing all the instruments in the orchestra at once.  Hooyah!