Paksworld

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.