Paksworld

Editors on both sides of the Atlantic and their respective powers that be (upstairs, the suits, the bean-counters) have agreed, so Oath of Fealty is now the official (until something breaks) title.

The comment from someone upstairs at Del Rey (“upstairs” is a hierachal terms, in this instance, not  architectural)  was that this title would work if we weren’t trying to go outside the core audience.  Which I’m not, though the Paks books have pulled in some very interesting readers.

Topology counts.    Magically transformed items will have the same number as the original.    (Who knew that topology would be a useful mathematical concept in writing fantasy?)

Talking jewelry is a PITA, perhaps especially if no one else can hear it.   Magic jewels always have their dangers, but the ones that try to convince you to do something…especially not easy to live with.

If you’re trying to open a magically locked door and one of your command words or spells causes a key to materialize and the door to unlock, this does not mean you have the situation under control.

Magic is dangerous but so are completely nonmagical ordinary objects like ropes, weights, and stones, if arranged by someone with malice in mind.

It’s not what you don’t know…it’s what you think you know that isn’t so…

Last week did not go as planned, and produced only a little over 3000 words of progress, but today I’ve done my 2000 (2084, to be precise) and the total on the second book  is now at 76,184.

I’m working on some fairly gnarly bits.  Dorrin is still dealing with her family’s legacy of evil and their connection with Liart, the Lord of Torments (also called the Bloodlord.)    Some people don’t trust her.

Not saying whose, right now, but there’s a set of royal regalia with its own personality and its own ambitions.   “Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown” is true, especially if it talks to you even when you aren’t wearing it.

I need to get the last tangles in the broadband connection worked out, so I’m not being distracted by that (or by A, B, C….X,  the other elements in my life that drag me away from the writing.)

I’ve mentioned before a book by one of my college professors, F.S. Lear’s Treason in Roman and Germanic Law. In the course of studying ancient and medieval history, I was dragged (willingly, most of the time, but sometimes dragged) through a lot of legal systems. Lear discusses the contrasting bases for a concept of treason, ultimate disloyalty, under the two systems: one tribal, where loyalty is to a person or tribe and treason is a personal betrayal. The tribal leader in that case cannot be guilty of treason because he (it was always he, then) is the one to whom loyalty is due. The other is formally legal, where loyalty is to a code of law, and anyone–including those at the top–can be guilty of treason if they have transgressed that part of the code.

Relevance to current politics is obvious, but not a topic for this blog, except to show that the same conflicts of concepts exists today, as it did 2000 years ago….and undoubtedly longer ago than that. I grew up on the Border, in an area where a culture that claimed to believe in a rule of law was in daily contact with a culture for whom personal relationships were obviously more important.

All of the history sources I used are relevant to the Paksenarrion universe, but this one, in particular, set the tone for the two types of Earthfolk–dwaves and gnomes– in the books.

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Titles are tricky.   What a writer thinks is the perfect title may not be what the editor/marketing director/publicist/bookseller…or reader…thinks is the perfect title.

The ideal title for fiction you want someone to buy is easy to read and say, and short enough to remember easily and tell someone else.     Very long titles occasionally work, but usually require more push by publisher and bookseller.   “Split Second” would be a better title than “A Brief Unit of Time Subdivided and How Important That Can Be in a Horse Race.”

It should resonate with the book (and, in a series, lend itself to working with other series titles–so it needs to resonate with the series, too.)    If it “chimes” (same or similar words) with other books by that writer, that must be intentional.  In series, chiming can be a powerful hint to readers that “Murder in Zanzibar” belongs with “Murder in Moscow” and “Murder in Beijing”, but if writing in more than one genre, the titles for each should be different enough that readers don’t pick up  “Barbarians at the Gate”  (the author’s time-travel military SF) thinking it’s related to “Gatekeeper’s Dilemma” (in the same author’s light-fantasy series about a college admissions committee in a world with faerie influence.)

The title, in other words, needs to attract the readership that’s most likely to enjoy the book, and repel the fewest possible “fringe” readers who might pick it up if the title isn’t a turn-off.

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Elves in Paksenarrion’s world are one of the Elder Races: they believe they are part of the First Song of the Singer, the Eldest of the Elder.  The Earthfolk (dwarves and gnomes) disagree, but don’t bother to argue.   In their own tongue, they are the Sinyi, the Sung.   Most are tall (the average elf is taller than the average human, though there’s overlap.)    From the human perspective, there are multiple contradictions: elves loathe war and claim that their innate love of harmony makes conflict more painful to them–and yet they can be touchy, easy to offend, and even quarrelsome.   Elven grudges last millenia…a fact that comes into play in the second book of this series in particular.   In the immediate area of the first and part of the second book, the ranking elf is Flessinathlin, the Lady of the Ladysforest, referred to as the Lady.  Kieri, King of Lyonya, is her grandson through her daughter.

The most important of the elvish powers,  to elves themselves, is the taig sense–the ability to sense and communicate with the “consciousness” of all living things.   This is believed to result from their being part of the First Song, in which they still participate, and they can “sing the taig awake”.   Next in importance, and related, is the ability to heal the taig, and its components.

Paksenarrion, some of you recall, joined up with Macenion, who told her he was a half-elf (he wasn’t, though he had a touch of elven blood and knew how to present it.)   Part-elves may or may not look elvish, and have varying amounts of elvish power.   This leads to many interesting situations…including in the current series.

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Word count is now 70,790

Saturday’s production 1092, Sunday’s 1117.    Home sick, but not too sick to write a little (despite careful separation and lots of hand-washing, caught what R- had.  At least he’s now well or almost.)

Need to bump up production to 2000 words/day.   Doable when I’m well again.

With the slow production in the past week, there’s not a lot to tell..decided to go back and write what happened immediately after the end of the first book (in the POV that now ends that book) and discovered another bit of excitement.  Funny how they can hide in the folds, as it were, until I concentrate on them and pull the story fabric taut.

This is a good way into the second book, but it seems appropriate somehow (don’t ask how the somehow works…only the hindbrain knows…)

………………………………………………

In the morning, clouds and snow had blown past, and a pale blue sky scoured by wind opened over them.  Kieri heard a noise in the stable yard below, and peered out his window to see the Pargunese king, stark naked, washing himself from a bucket of steaming water; the two Pargunese lords, just as bare, were doing the same.  Did they never stop proving how hardy they were?  When the king had finished, he gave a shout and ran bare as he was around the yard, and the other two ran after him, all laughing like boys.  Kieri eased the shutter closed, and shook his head.

…………………………………..

The book continues to throw surprises at me, though not fast in the last couple of days as the International Gut Bug has reached our house.   But leaving that unsavory subject aside…it dawned on me last night, working on a scene between Dorrin and some of her cohort, that this continues a conversation begun in the first Paks book, and resulting (ultimately) from a very old schism in human behavior.

What is loyalty?  Who or what can be the object of loyalty?   What are the theoretical and practical and ethical boundaries of loyalty?   Heavy stuff for New Year’s Eve…

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