Paksworld

Location:  The palace in Chaya, in Lyonya, shortly after Kieri’s arrival

Present: Paks,  Dorrin (POV), the Knight-Commander of Falk

Some snippage for this use, but the main events are here:

The room brightened.   Paks had come alight, not as bright as in the battle, but enough to cast a soft glow through the room, drowning the light of the candle Dorrin had lit.

“You, I suppose, will take on the role of her supervisor?”

Paks shook her head.  “Not I, sir.  She is a Knight of Falk.  It is not my place, and I have no call to go with her.  I do have a call to aid her here and now.”

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The cultures in Paksenarrion’s world are all advanced enough to use metallic coinage, though barter still exists (and still exists today, of course) and “paper” in the form of letters of credit and other non-coin exchange exists in some places.

Where you have coins, you have counterfeiters.    Paks, being a trusting soul, paid little attention to the coins she carried, though moneychangers were attentive to the possibilities.   In the new books,  with viewpoint characters who are older, more worldly, and having to deal with financial matters, I found myself facing the certainty of counterfeiters.

Only problem…I knew very little about how it was done.

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Location:  in Aarenis, within several days’ march of Cortes Vonja.  Situation: night after a frustrating day of marching, barely evading an ambush, more marching.

………………………..

…his assailant lay dead on the ground.    He was a small, wiry man in short trousers, barefooted–his soles horny as goats’ hooves–his hair in a curious braid, stiff with something he’d smeared on it.  On a thong around his neck was a medallion with a design Arcolin did not recognize.

………………………..

This is part of an incident added to the part cut off from what is now Oath of Fealty and will be in the second volume of the group.   It helps fill in what had been a sketchy way to cover some weeks.     Although the forward part of the plot of the second book is moving, there’s fill-in to be done, because I was compressing the last 55,000 words when I hoped to squeeze it all into that first volume.    It was packed tight–too tight, too much left out.  This is putting some juice back in.

It was also one of those surprises, a bit of plot-stuff I didn’t expect.   It was so unexpected I had to check with a couple of people to see if the whole situation was feasible.  And it is.

Of course, the really interesting thing is  not a sailor in a tree, but who put the sailor in the tree.

Over on the website,  part one of the People section is now up and live.  It covers the basic groups, some of which–elves, dwarves, and gnomes– have been discussed on this blog.   I took out some bits of the blog info as not really necessary, and added some.

Additional groups discussed include the kuaknom/iynisin/dark cousins–those “fallen” elves the others don’t like to mention–and four basic, distinct human lineages: the Old Humans of the north, the magelords who came over the sea from Old Aare to Aarenis (and later, the north), the horse nomads,  and the Seafolk.    The people in the far west, beyond Kolobia, are peripheral enough (so far!) that they’re not being included.

Eventually (but not immediately–need to spend more time on the books proper) there’ll be more background information on specific people–both “current” (in book terms) and historical (ditto), myths and legends, religions, etc.

The new front page at the Paksworld website is now up.  If you’ve been there before you may need to hit Refresh or Reload or however your browser does it to see the new design.

Eventually the other pages will have a top design but not as big as this–maybe a green banner with the page title in gold or something–simple, anyway, and not taking up too much room.

Jennifer Davis did the digital form of the artwork from my sketches; I played with the colors; Ruta Duhon of Willowbrook Designs put it all together and kept me from going astray.

Hope you enjoy it.   (Now to quit playing with custom colors and “how many weird things can I do with this interlacement” and get back to work on the book proper.)

My artist friend Jen handed over the digital version of the title block design for the Paksworld website and I got to play with coloring  inside the lines.  Jen worked from my very crude design, done with a rollerball pen on graph paper, and made it beautiful.

The challenge was to find a design that would scale up and down and still evoke the complexity of the world I’m writing in.   We started over a month ago (before Jen was called in) and I started showing sketches to my web designer.   This produced a series of encounters  that went roughly like this:

Me: “See this?  Isn’t it gorgeous?  I want something like *this* bit right here, but mixed with this other thing over there.”

Webguru:  “Do you have any idea how many pixels that takes?”

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Location:   Valdaire, an expensive inn, private dining room.

“And so it is, ” she said, sitting back and folding her hands on the table.  “You are the man I thought you were, once I saw past my own ambition and my own losses.  Friends?”

“Always,” Arcolin said.  “Unless of course we’re hired by enemies, but even then–”

“We have the Code, and we are content, are we not?”

“We are content,” Arcolin said.

……………………………..

Anyone care to guess the identity of the lady, and the former relationship, if any?

On the bright side of the page:  my new editor is my oldest editor, Betsy Mitchell, who guided the original Paksenarrion books through the publishing maze and taught me a lot along the way.   I could not have found a better editor for this project than Betsy.  She was in on Paks’s world from the first day the manuscript crossed her desk, and you can be assured that she will hold my feet to the fire to make these books the best they can be.

Also good news:  I’ve been cleared to share more and longer snippets with you.  Some of those will also be posted on the  Paksworld website.

With that in mind, I’ll try to post a snippet later today.

We hope Oath of Fealty will make it into the spring list in 2010–nothing’s set in stone there–and when I have a firm release date, I’ll post it here and on the Paksworld website.

2374 words today

81, 712 words in Book II

A difficult day of writing, switching from desktop at home to laptop at various destinations in Austin, then home to finish up the day’s wordage.  Lots of backing and forthing–erasing whole paragraphs, re-writing.

In late morning, I heard through the grapevine that my editor had been let go–confirmed later by a phone call my husband picked up after I had left for the city.   I thought Liz was excellent and very much enjoyed working with her.  I’m being handed to another excellent editor, but parting is not sweet sorrow when you’ve had a good working relationship with someone and hoped to have it continue.

2216 words today so far

79,338 in book II

If I’m fizzing with music energy when I get home from choir, I may try to rip off that last 662 words to make an even 80,000 at midweek.

Then, if I can pop the next two days up to 2500 each, I’d be at 85,000 and caught up from the slump last week.    A dangerous game to play, though, esp. with my hands and the need to nurture these blogs.

It feels good to have the routine building in again, though.   I have spurts of greater natural productivity, but 2000/day is a comfortable range for me–enough to keep the story alive mentally, but not the strain that it was last fall.