Paksworld

There’s a new story barreling along this morning–not book-length, but it’s certainly alive and wiggling  in the writer’s hands, tossing off new ideas every few paragraphs.    Remember our discussion about top-down and toe-up sock knitters?   Thanks to that, I now know more about the great trade fairs at Fiveway, the craft guilds,  the pride of one particular sock-knitter, the jealousy and vindictiveness of one of her former suitors (she’s happily married to a wool merchant) ,  the duties of a Fair-warden, the duties of a Guildmaster in the Knitters’ Guild,  how booths are arranged (but not yet WHY there’s a saddler at the far end of the row in which Gralin has her booth.)     Read the rest of this entry »

Even an experienced, normally alert person can be thinking about something else when heading home along a familiar route…but lapses in situational awareness can be dangerous even there.  Read the rest of this entry »

Whatever you do this time of the year,

Midwinter up here, midsummer down south

I hope you have joy and friends all around you

The taste of your favorite foods in your mouth. Read the rest of this entry »

As I’ve mentioned before, late in a project almost anything can be a spoiler–so many clues, so many established patterns missing just one piece.  Early on, all roads are open, but by now, many of them, the ways not taken, have been left behind.

So this may be a spoiler for some, though I’ve tried not to let it be.  If you are a reader who hates knowing anything before its time, then don’t read below the break.  Stop now.  Turn around, don’t look back, ignore the rest of this.  For those who proceed, please do your speculating about where in the book this is, or what character you might know, in the Speculation Space.  Read the rest of this entry »

Here’s a very short snippet (there are spoiler-cooties all over what comes before and after.)    But the enmity between some elves and some humans is still going strong in Lyonya and not all the secrets have been excavated even yet.   This comes early in the second third of the book, at a point where Kieri is increasingly frustrated at not being able to access all of his innate magery.  Recall that he has inherited magery from three sources: elves, magelords, and Old Humans.   At this point he is able to access two of the three–elven and magelord, but needs the third.   Read the rest of this entry »

The copy edits have gone back to NYC on the wings of…oh, I dunno, a FedEx purple plane, probably.  They’re to be delivered Monday morning.  I made a copy for myself (hellishly expensive, but I did it last time and it makes checking the proof pages much easier–I can see if the copy edits were transferred correctly to the pages.)

And here we are, with no copy edits between us, and the long, long wait until May, and…I’ll bet you’d like a snippet.   The usual warnings apply.  All snippets contain the potential for unintentional spoilering.  If you don’t want any spoilers at all, not even the tiniest, most accidental one,  don’t read the snippet.    The snippet will be below the break, after  “more” warning.   If anyone thinks of something spoilerish that they’re pretty sure is right…please don’t post it in comments to this post.  As soon as I finish this one, I’m going to open a Speculation Space for such discussions, and all you who don’t like spoilers should stay out of it.    Is that OK?   (If not, I’ll fix it later.) Read the rest of this entry »

As  King Mikeli’s younger brother has demonstrated in previous books, he’s an impetuous, energetic youngster with a gift for ending up in difficulties.   He’s also warmhearted, well-intentioned (in his own way) and brave.  He was supposed to be one of those minor characters who decorates the margin of the story,  illuminates the context of major characters.  However, Camwyn  did not stay marginal.   Quite the contrary.  Rather like Arvid, in that respect, he showed up at the oddest times, doing things that put him center stage.

It’s not that Camwyn wants to cause trouble for himself or others.  But a lightning rod person will always snag any electricity around, and he does.  Hence…a snippet.   By keeping it annoyingly short, I can just barely avoid spoilers, but may it bridge the gap over A-Kon, when I won’t be around to post anything. Read the rest of this entry »

From one of my mother’s favorite joke verses…and relating to the power outage that had all my stuff offline for awhile this afternoon.    I learned to recite this as a little kid, and I still think it’s funny.

Am he gone?  Are he went? Have he left I all alone?  Us can never go to he; he can never come to we.  O cruel world, to I unkind!  Go he way and leave I hind! It cannot was.

It wasn’t in the “humor and whimsy” section of the big poetry anthology we had, so I have no idea where it came from, nor did my mother.   Online search didn’t find it (haven’t looked lately, though.)   If you do, let me know the author.  At any rate, the power up in north Texas was off, shutting down my hosting service, the wonderful SFF.net/Greyware,  and they were kind enough to post what happened on Twitter and let us know when they got back up again.

The warehouse scene continues to amuse (me, anyway)  although the transitions are still extremely rough.  They feel rough to Arvid, too.

Anyway…a little bitty snippet from today that may or may not be like this in the final version:

…………………………………………………

How many were there?  The report they’d gotten only said “a gang of men” had attacked the grange.  Arvid felt in his cloak pockets–he had only three bolts left.  He glanced behind.  Could he make it over the next roof before they got to him?  Maybe.

………………………………………………..

It has to be brief because it’s a Book V snippet and would otherwise be trailing a cloud of spoilers for Limits of Power.

OK, gang, I’m a lot better today…not well yet, but definitely on the way.  So: last day of contest entries (in case you’ve been holding back) is Friday, January 4, 2013 with a time-stamp deadline of midnight.    I should have an answer for you by Sunday night (giving myself extra time to be sure I get an accurate count of entrants and am not confused by multiples.  The old brain isn’t necessarily 100% yet.)

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This is a small bouquet of gratitude to someone on the list who–reading the snippet–found an inconsistency with Oath of Gold and emailed me privately about it overnight.  So this morning I hauled out my copy of that book, and the manuscript, and knew he was right–it was an inconsistency and it needed to be fixed, if possible.   The book’s already past copy editing, so I didn’t know if it could, but I set to work looking for the smallest possible fix that wouldn’t mess up any other previous books.

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