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The struggle with tangled plotlines and histories is now showing clear progress. I don’t think even the most spoiler-phobic will think being told the categories of revelations are spoilerish…but just in case, I’m putting a break between this first paragraph and the rest.
I now know where the magelords came from, back to their origin. Didn’t see that coming. Should have. Was fixated on Kuakkgani instead.
I now know the surprising reason One Family got involved in blood magery and others didn’t.
I now know all the reasons why Someone didn’t like Someone Else, besides the reasons Someone gives others or the other reason Someone Else gives others.
I now know the genealogy of several Someones (not either of the Someones above) back far enough to both explain some past interactions and clue me to the next.
I now know where Someone (not any of the Someones above) was during a hiatus in appearance in the books.
I now know why Someone (not any of the Someone’s above but related to one of them) quarreled with Someone (one of the other Someones above) and what the outcome of that quarrel was.
I now know why that Someone (the one just above) initiates actions that lead to other actions by other Someones already mentioned in a previous book and may even allow authorial recovery from an apparent (it may only be apparent) chronological glitch.
I now know, in general, what the population “shape” of the various races has been over a very, very long period of time.
I also now know that if you keep starting sentences with “I now know”, you’ll type “I know know” about half the time…or I will, anyway. And a few other things that I can’t describe in general enough terms to keep them from being spoilers.
Things I still don’t know and need to find out:
Who are the [spoiler-oops] who are living in [other oops] and are critical to the end game? What is their entire background?
How did the necklace (you already know about the necklace, so this isn’t spoilerish) get into that robbers’ lair where Arvid found it? (Why do I need to know this? Just in case it’s going to tie into the final knot of the plot. It may not. But I need to know anyway.) (And a clue may have just landed in my brain, but that’s for later.)
Which of the secondary characters–all of whom think they’re the center of the plot, of course (as they are, in the plot of their own individual stories)–is actually connected to the outer Plot? They’re all in there, busy as an anthill, doing what they think it important, scheming away on their own agenda as we all do, and some of them have an agenda that will put them right in the path of the outer Plot, like someone determined to get to an appointment who crosses the train track without looking, just in time to be clobbered and affect the train’s schedule.
Knitting and thinking and writing in the Ideas file has been very useful. Now if the rest of the world (meaning, other LifeStuff that interferes with the work) would just go away and let me do nothing but write and think about the book and potter around in the garden and kitchen to avoid terminal chair-stiffness, that would be very helpful. As for the knitting, there are some new pictures up. I continue to make mistakes, but some of them turn out to be features. May it be so for the books.
Comment by Robert Conley — May 9, 2011 @ 10:21 am
Should be cool to read. I enjoyed the revelation about the Kuakkgani and their arm. One of the those seemly little touches that make you appreciate a fictional world all the more. And has a lot of interesting implications for the setting.
Assuming of course what the Lady said was accurate and not slanted towards her point of view.
Comment by arthur Piantadosi — May 9, 2011 @ 10:29 am
This is Arthur. I think that any attempt to find out “the truth” is like the story of the five blind men and the elephant.
Comment by Kip Colegrove — May 9, 2011 @ 12:12 pm
Regarding mistakes in creating works of art and craft, I’ve read that those who paint in water colors have got to learn to work with one oops after another and incorporate such “mistakes” into the final image, since there is no way to conceal the earlier work under subsequent layers. The better one gets at doing that, the better a watercolorist one becomes, all other abilities (draftsmanship, proportion, use of color, etc.) being sufficient.
I suspect we must all learn to deal with the translucency of reality to some extent.
Comment by Eir de Scania — May 9, 2011 @ 12:13 pm
TEASE!! 🙂
Comment by Jim DeWitt — May 9, 2011 @ 12:46 pm
Perhaps more accurately “redacted revelations.” Still, good to know the plot threads are unsnarling.
Comment by Laura BurgandyIce — May 9, 2011 @ 12:49 pm
What a lovely untangling!
Comment by Rolv — May 9, 2011 @ 2:19 pm
Feeling like a kid waiting for Christmas …
Comment by Dave Ring — May 9, 2011 @ 3:10 pm
Congratulations! Hope I survive long enough to read the revelations — my Parkinson’s is doing better than I am. Anyone’s prayers for courage and/or healing will be very gratefully accepted.
Comment by arthur Piantadosi — May 9, 2011 @ 3:41 pm
This is Arthur. God bless you, Dave.
Comment by elizabeth — May 9, 2011 @ 5:31 pm
Dave, I certainly hope you do too, and you have my prayers for your courage and healing. The courage I think you already have.
If I were able to write faster, and get the story to you faster, I certainly would.
Comment by elizabeth — May 9, 2011 @ 5:45 pm
Yesterday’s sermon was on being wrong…and how that is a) inevitable and b) sometimes the best or only way to come right at the end.
Comment by elizabeth — May 9, 2011 @ 5:45 pm
Guilty as charged.
Comment by elizabeth — May 9, 2011 @ 5:46 pm
Points for vocabulary!
Yes, you’re right. Revelations to me, redacted to you.
Comment by elizabeth — May 9, 2011 @ 5:48 pm
Feeling like the parent trying to assemble the Christmas gift that requires finding Tab A to put into Slot A (and the rest of alphabet ditto, plus the little package of tiny fasteners that’s hard to open and spills small, sharp, fast-rolling screws, washers, etc. all over the floor, leaving you with a few too few. And the directions written in five languages, none of them quite your own.)
Comment by Kip Colegrove — May 9, 2011 @ 7:38 pm
Dave–my prayers you certainly have, and my respect for asking. Also my thanks for sharing the delight you find in such works of creative imagination as are celebrated in this venue.
Comment by Linda — May 10, 2011 @ 6:19 am
Great post … seems like a lot of my questions will have answers some day. That’s reassuring. Dave, I’ll add my prayers that you will read them too.
As a librarian (rtd.) if you haven’t read Megan Whalen Turner’s books, beginning with The Thief, they offer yet another set of fascinating characters in a believable and detailed world with mythology, religion,
climate … all the things we love about Paks World. They are part of a network of books which sustain me when things look bleak.
Blessed be.
Comment by Jenn — May 10, 2011 @ 7:42 am
Elizabeth I love your portrayal of all your secondary characters. I wish it were a perfect world where you could sit and write clearly all their live stories. Maybe in the next world.
Dave, you have my prayers for spiritual and physical healing. If you believe in miracles you might look up:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yhvCzG01j1w
Comment by Abigail Miller — May 10, 2011 @ 11:48 am
BUMMER, Dave. You have all my very best wishes!
Comment by David R Campbell — May 10, 2011 @ 3:54 pm
Are you familiar with the term “retcon”?
Comment by elizabeth — May 11, 2011 @ 7:48 am
Yes, though it always throws me for a minute by its similarity in form to “DEFCON” so I struggle through a nonmemory of its military meaning before remembering that it’s not in that box.
Comment by Dave Ring — May 11, 2011 @ 3:13 pm
Thanks to all for your prayers and encouragement. Elizabeth, your books do a lot to keep my spirit up.
Comment by Genko — May 24, 2011 @ 7:35 pm
So that story of the Kuakkgani’s arm that the Lady told, is that true? I wondered whether it was another one of the many myths that sprang up about them.
Comment by elizabeth — May 28, 2011 @ 1:01 am
You don’t get to find out for sure at this time. It may be wholly mythical, partly true, or completely true.