Paksworld

Short version:  All my files are gone.

Longer version:   That includes: books, short fiction, poetry, letters, nonfiction, addresses, etc.  Character lists for each piece of fiction (for continuity, very handy to have organized lists for another book or story set in the same universe–by organization, by location, by genealogy, by status (for those who die in the course of  a book) , etc.   Place names, locations, descriptions.   For some, salient physical and historical notes:  age at marriage, age at birth of children, age at which significant injury/illness occurs.  Etc.

Gone. All of it.  Things in print are still there, of course, but as stories, not as organized files where I had been able to look up things like how old Character A was when their younger sibling was born or an older sister died, things that affect characters’ growth & development, deep motivations, reactions, etc.

How it happened doesn’t really matter, except to me and my tech assistant, trying to be sure it never happens again.  A lof it is not recoverable at all, given my aging brain with its memory holes here and there.  Not without stopping writing new stuff to try to rebuild the research library of the old files.  Hours of work spread over nearly 40 years built the accumulated mass,  which  went way beyond what was obviously in the books.

So I have the complete printout of one of last summer’s short stories, and a printout of part of another.   I’m working this week to get them back into digital form, into multiple forms of storage, one of which I hope will still work in 5 or 10 years.   I know people who have whole or partial drafts of others.   I’m not dwelling on how bad this is, but focusing (narrowly for now) on what I can do, which is work from paper to digital, rebuild a file structure, start filling, and at the same time produce clean texts for publication when the next collection should be out.  Not going into gory details because they make my head hurt and take time.  Takeaway: Bad break, but writer is not sitting around moaning…writer is, and will be, at work.

Writing is not like a box of chocolates.   Writing is a hike through a wood that seems familiar (especially Paksworld) interspersed with time spent in the present tense, and the interaction of these two universes in ways that (after this many books and stories) might be expected to be familiar though I know it won’t be.  Paksworld waits for me to enter it.  This world shoves itself in my face when I’m trying to follow a faint trail in Paksworld…forced me out of it, and into this, usually with something unpleasant, but sometimes with sounds or sights or people that are sheer delight.

Before I forget to mention a useful one from today: I had gone down for a brief rest in the afternoon, suddenly felt “It’s time to get up NOW” and got up, put on more warm stuff, and went out to feed horses.  Richard came with me to make sure the water got done.   I put out their feed, opened the gate, let them into the barn where they went peacefully (no pinned ears, no hoisted hind hoofs) into their respective stalls and started eating.  Richard had brought in several more buckets of decomposed granite.  I felt energized by the rest enough to bring in four more.  Dark clouds had shown to the south, obviously headed this way.  Got the fourth bucket in and poured, stamped it down, put the shovel and bucket away.  Tigger indicated he’d like a cookie or several.  I gave him several, petting him between them,which he tolerated.  Rags looked on with envy but kept eating his hay.  We left the barn; the rain started, very lightly.

OK, so problem.  4843 word chapter in Horngard II that–temporally speaking–belonged in Horngard I but did not fit it well.  For one thing its setting is in southern Fintha…MC is Arvid, others are his mentee, Jakard, whom none of you have met yet, Arvid’s son Arvi,  and (very briefly) the yeoman marshal of Arvid’s grange.  So it’s a long way from the main line of action; the only overlap is Gwenno Marrakai when she (mumble-mumble-mumble not to spoiler the book.)   Gwenno encounters Arvid & Jakard once, briefly.   She’s on the main line of the plot; they aren’t.  Clearly, that puzzle piece of 4843 words did not belong in Horngard I.  Horngard II?  It was originally the second chapter of H-2. It got pushed sideways along the tracks, with more of the immediate outcome of H-1 shoving in quite reasonably.  H-2 continued to grow, skipping over Arvid and Jakard.   I should have pulled it out right then, but it was a compelling chapter, with some really powerful bits in it.  Meanwhile its story got more and more out of both place and time with H-2…it’s written contemporaneous to about 2/3–3/4 of the way through H-1, still in late summer, and now, in H-2, it’s winter.   And it’s still not main plotline for H-2.  So I was going to pull it out right after Thanksgiving.  Yesterday, Friday, having forgotten about an earlier problem I had with the new Word and Copy/Paste, I marked it off carefully from the rest and attempted the Copy/Paste.

WORD HAS ENCOUNTERED A PROBLEM   No hint of what the problem was (other than long, and THEN I remembered I’ve had problems with this new word not wanting to do a simple copy/paste even within a file at times.  Sometimes I can copy/paste an image into Word and sometimes I can’t. )   It was late by then because I had goofed off watching videos of saber exercises from several sources on You Tube, so I put it away to argue with today.  Today it still would not copy paste that chapter.   WORD HAS ENCOUNTERED A PROBLEM.  Checked all the steps, tried again.  WORD HAS ENCOUNTERED A PROBLEM.   Infuriating.  No information about WHAT problem.  Or WHAT to do about it.  Or link to more information.

Word used to copy paste smoothly…any length.  Now it doesn’t.   Why would they change something that useful?  Why had they changed the equally useful Cut/Paste?  I imagined trying to copy/paste maybe 10 words at a time…how long that would take, what a waste of my time.    So I posted a query on Facebook–this is my problem, is there any easy fix?  One person suggested one.  I went back to Word to see if it would work…and the selected words, all 4843 of them…disappeared.   I didn’t have time to follow the instructions I’d been given.  What did I do?  I have no idea.  Moreover, I knew (because most of the chapter had been written several months ago) that I could no longer expect to rewrite it easily, even though I read it yesterday as I was selecting the text.  I know the story (who did what to whom and what a different who thinks about that) but the details, the small things that made the passage come vividly alive…are gone.

As this had begun to turn on me, as some stories do, I will probably take this opportunity to grab it by its collar, shake firmly, and say “Nobody wants a grimdarkdepressing story in the midst of the grimdarkdepressing crap we’re all living through so…let’s see what horribles will fall out of your pockets and turn this into a serious *but bearable* story.   A story in which Jakard just may survive.

And now for Sword Talk.   Here are a few of the websites I’ve been looking into. 1)  Schola Gladiatoria, Matt Easton owner I’ve mentioned before.  Deals in antique weapons, is involved in historical re-enactment events in UK, runs a HEMA club in London, teaches a variety of historical weapons, enjoys sparring with light sabers as well as synthetic and steel swords of various kinds.  Background in history, archaeology, and more.   Big site, plenty to learn.  Frequently co-sponsors a video with Tod’s Workshop (Tod makes replica weapons and also does research on how they function.  2) The Winged Sabre Historical Fencing Channel, Russ Mitchell, owner.  Discovered this week while looking for more beginner saber exercises.   His background includes human anatomy in relation to movement and conditioning.  I’m very impressed with his “clean practice” approach and his approach to “the anxious fencer.”   (Clean practice means doing every movement precisely correct, so that in an emergency you do it much closer to right than you would if you practiced “slapdash” moves.  You don’t practice until you can to it right…you practice until you can’t do it wrong (or hardly ever.  Those of you were hoping to snicker about “dirty practice” in another direction…go stand in a corner.)  His Hungarian Hussar Saber warmups will be my next set of things to work on.  I already have a lifetime of injuries of various kinds, so, as mentioned before, taking this slow.   More later…long after midnight due to othr stuff.

A week of working with the saber and I’m definitely getting more of a feel, including the feeling of sore shoulders, forearms, and hands.   But right-handed, I can hold the saber out straight in front, arm straight, with much less quivering, and raise the tip and lower the tip to level again, over and over and over….twice as many up/downs as when I started.    Then rotating the wrist, thus the blade, so that sharp edge is to the outside/down, outside/down ten times, then inside/down, inside/down, inside/down ten times.   Elementary first steps to controlling the blade.  Switch to left hand, which is weaker.  More quivering in the straight front hold (even today)  then on the right.  Can’t do as many up/down or rotational turns as with the right…but more than I could do on the first day.

Whole-arm swings, to loosen up, in a figure-8 pattern, right handed first for a gradually increasing number of swings,  then left handed , passing hand to hand in the middle.  Then added another exercise on Thursday:  elbow “motionless” as much as possible at my side, wrist only moving blade in figure 8 swing without letting my right shoulder lean sideways or forward.  A work in progress, not there yet.   Several other exercises, also not yet mastered, but working on them.

I’m working on both sides, because I have a big strength difference between left and right that I want to reduce, not because it’s in any of the written or demonstrated exercises.   The one-sidedness goes back to the encephalitis I had as a child, which left my left side much weaker for quite a while and was exacerbated by playing tennis in HS–right-handed–which selectively strengthened the already strong side and left the weaker side to itself.   I’m thoroughly enjoying the saber and hope I end up “straighter” on top after another half year or so.

Meanwhile this week Horngard II is sitting at 32.8K words in spite of everything else that’s gone on.

Writing about sword-wearing, sword-using characters, and then handling some antiques owned by others, pushed me to indulge my own long-term interest in blades.   Some of mine are blades I used in fencing lessons (with SCA instructors) and those have been more or less permanently blunted.    I bought a bated (blunted from birth, so to speak) longsword when I needed to see what it felt like to carry, how hard it was to handle in indoor spaces and in the woods, etc.   It was very helpful to get that physical feel of it, especially walking around and through ordinary obstacles.  I have a few sharps, on which I practiced slicing things and poking things to see what it felt like (and also because it’s fun to slice the bottom lumps off  2 liter plastic bottle hanging from a tree limb when it’s full of water and the water squirts out and…yeah.  Juvenile fun with swords.)  But all of it (including the spear, the bill, and some other more period bits I have) have contributed a lot to scenes in which someone is doing something with a sword, spear, bill, etc. When I borrowed a scythe and scythed some tall grass, that was another experience that enhanced my writing about Gird.  Same with the crossbow.  No amount of just reading or watching movies or videos can provide the body-feel of handling things yourself, whether it’s kneading a loaf of bread, digging a ditch, riding a horse, knitting a sock, or…using a weapon.

I was gifted a gorgeous USMC Mameluke officer’s sword by friends who knew I hadn’t been able to get one at the time, but I don’t “play” with it…it needs sharpening (barely sharp now) by someone more expert than I am.  It has a curve, and it’s definitely a weapon, not just a display item.

But as the Paksworld books have progressed, and I’ve studied more about swords, I’ve wanted to add a lighter-armed cavalry type to the mix in some areas.  And I’ve long wanted a curved blade that I didn’t feel as protective of, as I do my dress sword.    I have a character now, in Horngard I and II, Nasimir Clart, owner/commander of Clart Cavalry, who is a quintessential cavalry man, familiar since Xenophon wrote about horse training and cavalry operations in ancient Greece, and described vividly (for the 19th century) in the excellent series of books by Allan Mallinson, about a young officer’s career through the Napoleonic wars  and beyond.   And I could not envisage Clart without seeing someone with lance and saber.

So when Matt Easton of Schola Gladiatoria, one of my online sources of info on antique weapons and fighting styles, had a review of a reproduction of the 1796 pattern British Light Cavalry saber that he thought got all the details right, right down to the distal taper of the blade…I was hooked.  It is a substantially “beefier” blade than the Mameluke,  much wider and heavier, with a deeper curve, trading grace, speed, and ease of maneuver for power.  So here it is, side by side with its scabbard.

I’m reasonably sure Nasimir Clart chose a different hilt…something he would find more stylish that also gave more hand protection than the simple knuckle-bow here.   But for me, this will do just fine.  It was getting dark by the time I got back from feeding the horses this evening…discovered it on the porch on the way out…so I didn’t have time after unboxing it to change into something more appropriate to take a picture of the first swings with it, but yes…I took it outside (it’s WAY too big to swing around inside) and found the balance strange in one way but quite nice once I started swinging it from the position to cover the back to various cuts in front.  This is a saber for serious cavalry combat in the lightly-or-no-armored style.   I will be doing things with it, for the same reason I used the others…it’s research.  That it’s also fun and good exercise is beside the point.  I absolutely did not buy a saber for the fun of it.   (Stop laughing, you there in the back.)

Instead of a snippet in words, a sketch–the kind of thing I often scribble on the back of an envelope or letter or any paper handy…this time the back of a 4×6 card, first with the gel pen and then colored in with colored pencils.   I made it Tuesday evening to clarify the terrain and situation for members of the Discord writing group I’m in–most of them not familiar with my work so not at all with Paksworld.    I don’t submit something every week, because they like shorter chunks of things, and that means fragments.  But what I often want most from a first reader is not detailed comment, but whether or not the flow of action makes sense or is jumbled.  In the first draft, I don’t worry about stuff that may not even be there in second draft.  (in fact, in this case I was editing right up to it being my turn because I knew they might have a problem visualizing the terrain without a lot more words than I wanted to spend…this area was described when the allied forced came in several days ago.

This doesn’t cover the entire area of the ambush sequence but the most relevant bits.  The card was white, but messing with the white balance enough to make it look white wiped out the other colors.  I need better light in the study.   Anyway.  North is up.  The Pliuni Road leads west and up to the citadel, or east  about 10 days’ travel through rows of hills (think the rumples of a kicked rug) to the walled city of Pliuni, about 5-7 days south of Valdaire.  That steep cliff on the left (contour lines close together) is the base of one of the “horns” of Horngard.  That lower hill on the right (contour lines farther apart) is the first hill east of the big cliff.   A waterfall comes down the cliff into a pool (out of scale)  with a bar at the east end that makes an easy ford for horses or people.  The stream flows east (and is also out of scale).  The red-brown seed-shaped ovals represent the horses of Clart cavalry exiting the citadel valley right before the ambush attack from across the stream.   Halveric Company (2 cohorts) is camped on the left, and Fox Company on the right.  Those triangular pointy bits are tents.  Green with squiggles inside is thick vegetation.  Ambushments include across the stream, from head-high bushes and young trees, and down from the end of that hill.  On the far side of the creek, there’s a hill like the one on this side; the attackers are armed with bows (blackwood longbows, a few crossbows, a few recurved bows) and the brush has been “sculpted'” by careful pruning to allow clear shots with maximum cover.   The distance across the creek is only 10-15 yards.  The vertical distance from the hilltop is somewhat more, but gravity adds punch.

In version 1 of this sequence, Nasimir Clart and his horse were wounded; in trying to dismount from his horse, an archer on the hill got a lucky hit into the back of his thigh.  However, that contradicted the sequence in “Bank Transfer” when he comes cantering across a ford some distance from here (not this ford) and is feeling great.  A deep wound in the back of the thigh would not let him ride again that soon, so the first major change in the story was changing out where he was and giving the injury to someone else.  (Sorry, Reassigned-Victim.)   Clart has not been a POV character before, and once turned loose he proved a superb one, producing good plot faster than I could write it.

Leaving aside the concussion problems (and I would LOVE to leave them aside forever but apparently…that’s not on my Bingo card),  the times I’ve run headlong into a serious problem with a book–a book-stopping problem–it’s been because I didn’t think things through enough.  A lot of writing happens internally (for me, anyway)  and sometimes–just like missing your turn when you’re driving somewhere because you were thinking about something else–I’m writing merrily along talking on the mental device and fail to notice when I’ve missed the exit and need to look at the map.  What map? you ask, knowing that there is no actual map for a discovery writer like me.    Ah…but there is a sekrit, sekrit, unknowable map you have to take on trust, I say, when you set out to sail the perilous seas of fiction writing.

Going wrong gives you a chance to rethink, add thinking to a period of distracted un-thinking, and think better.  The tangle I found between “Bank Transfer” and Horngard II included multiple opportunities, and I’m glad sit here on a rainy morning, with chili being reduced on the stove to the correct thickness (the big kitchen spoon stands upright in it), the horses munching hay in their stalls, and a feeling of deep satisfaction because I went out at midnight, sniffed the wind, and shut the barn door off of the stall that has one.  (The wind smelled wet and tropical.  The rain source is that dying tropical storm of the Pacific coast of Mexico.  The wind had been humid, as if there was water up there somewhere, but smelling local–undertone of dry and autumnal.  The shift was very noticeable at midnight and so were the big fat wet clouds blowing across the moon.)  The smell of warm oceanic “wet” air masses is something you learn from many sniffs.

Day before yesterday, conferring with Rancherfriend E-, I decided that one change to grease the knotted ropes of the two stories would be a change in character.  Tried it out Sunday night, and yeah, it worked, in theory.  Then I went from blocking (jotting ideas down) to first drafting a new version.  Suddenly this character I’d never used as  a POV before took off down the trail like a rocket, trailing clouds of spent plot  and many words behind him.  VERY different from the guy he replaced or the guy who replaced him.   Didn’t need a nudge, or for the writer to suggest what he should do…he just tore off and did his thing and it was RIGHT.  There’s one tiger who’s not going to return to being “minor” again, I’ll bet.   Getting into the right person’s head–letting that person carry the story–really works.  Sometimes you have to step out, but it slows the story, makes it less immediate.

Back on October 5, I emailed my agent Horngard I.   Heard nothing.  Finally called and asked (in the intervening days had a wonderful house-guest and we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves, talking, listening, reading, writing  (me, then reading her bits of it),  giving horses treats, enjoying the good weather, etc., etc.   And cooking.  She made chocolate pudding and brownies-from-scratch.  I made chili from scratch.  We had chili more than once (I just ate the last bowlful in the pot for supper and have two “short” quarts in the freezer.   My mouth feels very tingly.)

So when I reached my agent (who was out of the office when I first called), turns out that email never arrived.   Re-emailed, and it got there.  So we’re back to square one in terms of waiting to see what he thinks of  it.

House-guest will be working on a compilation of Paksworld stuff for me so I don’t have to search through all the books to maintain continuity and accuracy.   Just the books (eleven, counting Horngard I) are now totalling 1.6 to 1.76 million words, with lengths between 155,000 and 176,000 words each.   The Paksworld short fiction adds another 100,000+ words.

The eighteen non-Paksworld books — the 7 Serrano-Suiza books, the 7 Vatta books, the 2 McCaffrey collaborations,  the 2 standalone books — are all over 100,000 each, mostly in the 120-130,000 range.   So that’s another 2.25 million words, roughly and a grand total for the books alone of 3.8 to 4 million words.   Plus the short fiction scattered through various markets (over 20 anthologies and ?? magazine publications.)   I am a “wordy” woman.  By no means the most words published of anyone in the field, but also not the least.   Not the best, not the worst, either.

I sure hope Agent likes Horngard now, and we can get it to the market and into print sometime next year.  And that Horngard II progresses without a hitch and gets me to 30.   (No, that’s not an ultimate goal, just an interim.  Love those zeros flipping the next number over.)

Horngard II is now coming along, though it’s run headfirst into a short piece I wrote this past summer.  Headfirst as in–as they are now–they’re incompatible in who was where when.   Something has to give way in one of them: when something happened, where something happened,  who met whom at this other place.   Neither Horngard II nor “Bank Transfer” has gone public yet, fortunately, but…which “darling” is going to have to be killed for the whole narrative to work?  “Bank Transfer” was supposed to slot neatly between Horngard I and Horngard II,  and the ambush scene AND the arrival of someone else (Ferran Count Andressat) on the north road into Horngard are now occupying that space & time.   Usually the short Paksworld stuff is either remote in time or space from one of the books–so no problem with overlap.   However, “Bank Transfer” was going to connect to later Horngard books through some of its characters, but it’s essential that the connection doesn’t conflict with what’s in the books.  Right now, it’s…being tricky.

The best time for an ambush is when the people you’re planning to attack are off-guard for some reason, and in a place that makes it easier to pick them off than for your side to be picked off.   If you have a small force and the other side has a large force (which you want to reduce a lot, rather than just kill one of)   you want a way to  confine them to an area (like a hog trap for wild hogs) where you can kill them without coming into full contact…trap them where a tide’s coming in fast, in a gorge with a flash flood coming, in quicksand, in any treacherous ground where they don’t know the hazard (e.g. that you’ve pre-dug pits with stakes in them and a light cover of dirt on something very breakable) , in any narrow declivity, etc.  Minus modern technology,  people traveling together in a group are unlikely to see through thick vegetation, around corners, over hills, in a fog, in heavy rain, while it’s snowing.   For one thing, they’re paying most attention to the nearby people they’re moving with, so they don’t bump into them or get bumped into, or trip over minor obstacles on the road or trail.   Even if you have the larger force and are ambushing a smaller force, and intend assassination rather than wholesale destruction, you’ll try to make it easier, less dangerous to your side, by picking the right place at the right time.

The details differ with place, season, local weather, experience level of the ambush designer (and more) but in these stories the lack of gunpowder and ordinary (to us) explosives, and the lack of modern communications, is always a factor.  Here and now, light-speed communication can show a criminal’s face and the license plate of the car they’re border to border, sea to sea faster than the criminal can drive there–or fly.  Not foolproof…hundreds of notices are issued each day and the farther the source, the less attention someone’s likely to pay to it, but the criminal cannot *count* on being unrecognized.   The current GA trial involving (among other crimes) the invasion of the Cotton County, GA, elections office is a perfect example: surveillance tape caught the county employees who let unauthorized people into the building…actually doing so.  And then caught them in the room with the voting machines.   But in Paksworld–with no cameras, no phones, no electric lights, no internet, no way for a city official in one city to contact an official in another (“We chased a gang of robbers out of our city; we think they headed off east toward your city…they were all mounted and one of them had a spotted bay and white horse about 17 hands…”)–it’s much easier for a gang to get away, safely ahead of pursuit, and be unsuspected ordinary travelers in another city.

Horngard I  went off yesterday to my agent, via Earthlink Webmail, since the handshake between Earthlink and Thunderbird is still, apparently shaky.  I’m receiving mail, but the sending has yet to have a confirmed arrival.  Earthink’s Webmail didn’t even hiccup when the full book file went in, and reported it in its “sent” file.  Agent has notified arrival but then he doesn’t if he’s doing something else.

I have already, this morning, looked over my notes & text (from much earlier in the year) for Horngard II, and the truncated ending from Horngard I , some of which will go into II, but not all.   It’s much cooler, and bright with an almost cloudless sky, still in the mid-70sF at 11 am (wow!)  so I have doors open for fresh air.   I realized when I took my meds this morning that I had *skipped* a couple of days, probably due to having a house guest and being distracted, or that’s my excuse.

Y’all deserve a snippet.   Maybe two snippets.   Early, middle, and late, let’s say

…………………………………………………………………………………………………..

Aesil M’dierra, having lunch in The Golden Fish in Valdaire, remembering a childhood incident:

Rainclouds low over the citadel, hiding all but the bases of the two peaks that gave the place its name.  Cold rain, slippery rock, then the warmth of the great entrance chamber, a polished bronze dragon statue, gold leaf that had once covered it almost worn away.  A man in yellow robes lifting the statue’s tail, the mouth opening, emitting first a puff of smoke and then warm red tongue sliding out for her to touch with her own….

She pushed memory aside with an effort.

…………………………………………………………………………………………………..

Juris Marrakai en route to Marrakai’s country estate, escorted by Royal Guard

“But–where do you turn for the house?”

“I’ll go; I can show them.  You go straight ahead.  Give me some men!”

“But we’re supposed to protect you!”

“My sisters!”  With that, Juris spurred back down the column for the crossroad, and Fandosson yelled for half the troop to follow Juris, then spurred ahead.

…………………………………………………………………………………………………

Meddthal Andressat, in Cha (south of Pliuni)  representing Count Andressat.  Andressat has claimed the South Marches since Siniava’s War.

The courier’s head fell forward like a puppet with cut strings.  Dead.  Meddthal felt he’d been dipped in ice water.  He was dragonkin, this was Dragon’s business, but Dragon–he touched his amulet and it lay cold on his chest.  He did not know where Dragon was.

“I will send word,” he said to his captain.  “Burn his clothes, just in case.  And bury him deep.”

He sent a courier north, that very hour, hoping it was not too late.

……………………………………………………………………………………………..

Enjoy!

New beginning….substantial changes in the LONG middle that have improved the “pull-through”….and new ending that is WAY better.

It’s going in when I can get my otherwise argumentative email non-partners (Thunderbird and Earthlink) to handshake again.

The final bit was ripping 2000 words out of the ending (you will not miss them!)   (And some of them will be in Horngard II anyway, near the front, where they fit better.)   So what did I learn in the course of this particular round of revision?

Back to basics.  Character’s central.  Scenes go slack when they’re not from a character’s POV, when they’re not infused with that character’s motivation, emotions, sensations.   Several-many times the temptation to go with the easy narrative regained momentum when I recognized where I’d fallen out of POV and got back into it.   Strong secondary and minor characters are fine (good, even essential)  but keep the main set of characters in focus as much as possible.  But when giving a secondary/minor’s action/POV, give it full measure of intensity.   In revision, look for those places where POV is weakened by straight narration in a neutral or authorial voice.

When looking at the levels of tension (which will vary through any long story and that’s fine) look at *how* the tension is lowered as it drops and under what conditions.  Vary the duration, rate of change, duration of new level, characters’ perception of reasons for the change (not just the writer’s sense that “this needs to relax/tighten up here.’)  Do not end every scene with a drop in tension or intensity of the plot.  Especially watch chapter endings and even more the book ending for long, drawn-out relaxations that are actually the tired writer calming themselves down so they can sleep.

All the usual style things I learned way, WAY back apply.    Simplifying a sentence by changing a participle to simple past (“He was thinking” to “He thought”)  both saves words and adds action.

Real World Intrudes:  It’s raining and the north barn door is up (was hot and stuffy this afternoon) .  It’s raining hard.   There’s some thunder.  It’s  almost 2 am.  I am not going out to the barn NOW.   I’m going to bed.

Among the Horngard progress notes:  finding the good picture of the mountain (one of three mountains–now I can’t find the images of the other two…they were on the old computer with the dead drive)  on which the site of Horngard is based.  I had tried to reproduce something like it myself, but my sketch looked like a pair of upside down funnels or cooling towers.  When I found the picture of Mountain #2, and was able to enlarge it on the screen, I realized *WAY* later than I should have, that a computer monitor makes a really good light table.  Yes, you don’t want to put a lot of pressure on it, but it doesn’t take much, and a gel pen doesn’t leak through ordinary printer paper.  Why do I need a visual?  Because, as a major location for much of the action in this book and at least one more, it needs to make sense, and real mountains involve real curves, real roughness, real rock characteristics.  This image will be edited to bring both horns of Horngard into closer height, and then I’ll bring in another part of the same general area to back it with other mountains and add a connecting ridge.  I looked at many other glacial valleys of different widths and depths in the same mountain ranges for comparison before making even light dotted-line ideas of where to go next.

In the story itself, and thanks to the comments received in a Discord writing group I’ve joined, I’ve made substantial changes to the front end, especially with the goal of being more inviting to people who haven’t plowed through the previous ten Paksworld novels and multiple shorter works.   Now I’m on cleanup….no fossils should be left when I’m done but there sure are fossils to find.  In one, someone who cannot be there IS there…and then ISN’T there again.  No, Paksworld does not include teleportation.  No, M’dierra is NOT with Camwyn on his first arrival at Horngard.   She has no magery.   (The ellven transfer patterns aren’t teleportation, really and they’ve mostly been disabled and nobody in this story is an elf anyway.)   Even Dragon *flies*, albeit in his own air, from place to place.   Large lumps of infodump have been scraped off the actual muscle and bone (wish I could do it that fast and easily with the fat, but…such is life.)

There’s a lot of family drama, now that I’ve written fiction covering three generations of some families and two of some others…at that point interactions are inevitable and motivations for doing/not doing things, and cooperation/competition, reveal their personal roots at times.  Some of this I find amusing (the eldest Marrakai, whose mother proves to know more about him than he knew she knew) and some annoying (Beclan Mahieran/Verrakai still prickly and very far from humble) , and some just lovely (to me anyway.  King Mikeli’s wife removing all the stuffy rose and burgundy velvet and lace and crowded heavy furniture in the Queen’s quarters, so that Mikeli and she have a lovely, serene, space that doesn’t remind him of his overbearing mother.  The young sprouts are now adults, the older sprouts are older,  the children are young sprouts (or at least older) and the world is about to change for a lot of people who thought, once again, they had it all laid out properly and the carpets nailed down.  Surely, THIS TIME all the energy spent will result in a stable setting for reasonable people.  Bwah-ha-ha, says the writer.

The family stuff underlies the characters but they’re living in a world with political machinations, religious difficulties, economic waves, and cultural differences that can often lead to disruption and even wars.   In the no good deed goes unpunished category, the return of stolen water (to make jewels) that occurred in Crown of Renewal is great for areas of drought, but allows those who live south of the desert in Aarenis to move back north and some of them are…difficult.

Anyway, as soon as I get M’dierra out of the chapters where she doesn’t belong, and anyone else who’s sneaked in while my back was turned, forward momentum will return.  Cleaned up two other chapters today.

Or…I think so.