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Yesterday I finished the second rewrite requested by Editor. Summer has been full of long, long days at the computer and short-short nights of too little sleep. (In between the two rewrites was something else that came up and required the same crunch approach.)
I have been able to work in some exercise, but sleep is crucial to full recovery (and in 30 minutes I’ll be back in the sack–back on the prescribed early bedtime and plenty of sack time.) However…in February I started making bread again, and homemade bread is healthier for me. I’m not managing a home-cooked proper meal every day (though I was for the brief times not in crunch mode) and that’s starting again this weekend. Fresh stuff, stuff I know my body likes. Plus the exercise.
So…what of Paksworld? Who’s alive and moving around? Cracolnya in childhood, again. Arcolin’s adopted son, again. Something really strange from way back in that world’s human history, in a part of Aarenis not yet revealed in print. The knitting guild story got bogged down in too much detail (you might be interested, but when the story grinds to a halt because of the amount of factual information about wool, spinning, dyeing, knitting, etc., I need to back off and look again…what is the story *really*? Can it be a shorter work or does it need to be embedded in a book so that the amount of detail, spread out, doesn’t slow things down?
On the way to DragonCon in not very long (it seems long now, but I know the days will zip past; they always do, and I’ll be packing the night before and wondering where the time went.) I’m not trying to push on any of the writing now; the rewrites forced me hard into the walls, ceiling, and floor of the Vatta universe and it will take time (and walks on the land and maybe other land) to come back into the rhythm of Paksworld. I have taken some pictures this summer that will help with seasonality in Aarenis. Today I thought I saw a gold-orange butterfly in the tree outside and it turned out to be a single leaf, already fall-golden, caught on a strand of spider silk and slowly turning back and forth in a light breeze. (It did look like a butterfly opening and closing its wings, from in here.) Perfectly natural, yet magically beautiful.
On the book news side, I got to pick the narrator for Surrender None and share the “correct” pronunciation. It was hard, since my internal voice, while working on Vatta, is hearing Vatta and Slotter Key and other SFnal (not fantasy) sounds. But that should improve the coming audiobook.
Comment by Annabel — August 12, 2017 @ 4:19 pm
I look forward to another visit to Paksworld – I told you, I think that when I was taken ill recently and couldn’t face reading books new to me, I immersed myself in Paksworld for the duration!
Comment by arthur — August 13, 2017 @ 3:35 am
Just heard about the Legacy of Gird audiobook. Wonderful news.
Comment by Sharidann — August 15, 2017 @ 1:42 am
Glad to know you get better.
I gave away my PB copy of Cold welcome to a friend who hadn’t read Vatta’s war, wondering if he shall like to book as much as I.
I have finished my err I think at least 3d reread of the whole Pentalogy…
Wondering about a couple of things (ok, more but those 2 in particular):
1) Dorrin…
Is she on the way to become an equivalent of Falk, Gird and the other saints or is she the first Falkian paladin ?
2) The North is supposedly 8 kingdoms…But somehow my count ends at 7: Tsaia, Fintha, Lyonya, Pargun, Praelith, Konstandya, Dordrozda (sorry about the spelling). Which makes me think that number 8 ought to be Horngard… and yet, Arcolin began his career in the south, not in the north…
Comment by RichardSimpkin — August 16, 2017 @ 2:56 am
Hi Sharidann
3rd reread of which five: Vatta’s War or Paladin’s Legacy?
There have been paladins of Falk before. The short story Giftsfeels like it is set well before Dorrin’s time. I think Dorrin has become something new but my idea may not match Elizabeth’s!
8 Kingdoms (well Praelith is a Sea Princedom, Fintha emphatically not a kingdom since hundreds of years ago, and Dzordanya an enigma with a Mother of Mothers, which leaves just 4 actual kings) – Elizabeth’s just posted over in Universes about her arithmetic! Maybe Lyonya counts twice because of its dual rule.
Comment by elizabeth — August 16, 2017 @ 8:19 am
Sharidann: Dorrin isn’t the first Falkian paladin (I think there’s even one mentioned in Sheepfarmer’s Daughter, in Siniava’s War) and I’m not sure yet whether she’s ended up as a paladin or something more. The term “Eight Kingdoms” is old, and was based on the “kingdom” the magelords established in what is now Lyonya, when they conquered the Old Humans the elves had tolerated there. Lyonya was their name for it, and then they considered that the elven kingdom was the elves’; they neither knew nor cared what it was called.
Comment by elizabeth — August 16, 2017 @ 8:26 am
Richard: Well, Elizabeth I didn’t turn England into a queendom, even though she was a reigning monarch–it was still a kingdom. The magelords saw everything in their terms, so they called every defined “country” a kingdom. And the name became so familiar that it’s still used. You’re right, that Lyonya counts twice, for historical reasons. The group of magelords that tried to take a chunk of The Lady’s elvenhome intended it to be a kingdom they called Lyonya. By the time the elves took it back, the name was traditional for the *human* area, and since the magelords didn’t know what the elves called that area, it stuck for human use. The agreement by which part of it was shared with humans, and then a human/elf sovereignty came later, but it’s generally understood that it’s a dual entity. Though into the future, with a half-elf king who was brought up human, and his half-elf children…it’s going to be interesting. Still, nobody’s arguing there about renaming the North to the Seven Kingdoms.
Comment by Sharidann — August 16, 2017 @ 8:59 am
@ Richard: Paladin’s Legacy. Only 2 rereads of Vatta’s war so far. 🙂
@Elizabeth: thanks for the answer, and there is indeed a mention of a paladin of Falk in The Deed of Paksenarrion. Still wondering what happens with Dorrin and can’t wait to read about it.
Comment by Wickersham's Conscience — August 25, 2017 @ 10:08 pm
Hurricane Harvey: Be safe. And dry.
Comment by elizabeth — August 26, 2017 @ 6:57 am
Thanks for your concern. We’re in a good place: the outer edge just got to us about an hour and a half ago, we’re at 1000 feet above sea level and far enough from the seasonal creek that its floods have never reached us, even the largest. And we’re not going anywhere–not driving on roads that will probably have water over them in places. My plan is chocolate chip cookies.
Comment by Jace — August 26, 2017 @ 9:06 am
I,from the first time I read Deed (20+ years ago), always thought a Falkian Paladin had sacrificed himself so young King Kieri could escape from “over the sea”.
Comment by Sharidann — August 28, 2017 @ 2:56 am
Good to hear you are safe!
My latest rereading of Paladin’s legacy triggered a rereading of The Deed…
Was very interesting in many aspects for me, particularly about the different characters and how they then appear in Legacy…
Comment by elizabeth — August 28, 2017 @ 7:08 am
The switch from “outside” perspective (how Paks saw them) and “inside” (how they saw themselves) did make a difference, yes. Plus the effect of the big changes in their lives brought about by Paks’s actions in Oath of Gold. She was the rock that started the avalanche of change, if you look at it that way. (Who pushed the rock is a different question. And of course in human affairs, the rocks have choices) In the process of writing, I learn more about the characters, so it’s a discovery process for me, too. I know some to start with, but then there’s always more.
Comment by RichardSimpkin — August 29, 2017 @ 11:41 pm
Sharidann, did you spot this one? Paks asked Mikeli (Crown Prince then) for a Council session in which to openly test Phelan’s birthright with the elven sword. Mikeli said after the Bells knighting ceremony, which could not be rescheduled, “Not if a dragon sat smoking in the inner court”.
The very next winter, who-what did King Mikeli have in his inner court, giving Prince Camwyn a brief ride?
Comment by Sharidann — August 31, 2017 @ 6:56 am
@ Richard: Grmmble…
Not yet, I just began Oath of Gold this morning. 🙂
But yes, I have many things which I find interesting, once I sort out my remarks, could be a long post. 🙂