Paksworld

Since the previous snippet was supposed to be posted Monday (but, fooled by DST, I sent it after midnight) here’s the snippet that *should* come today.

I’ve previously posted a snippet that comes shortly before this one, about Stammel’s first experience in unarmed combat drill after his blinding.    Those who haven’t read the earlier snippet might want to look at it before reading this one.    They’re both in Chapter 9.

And spoiler warnings do apply:  don’t read below the line if you don’t want to know what happens.

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One of the topics UK Editor suggested for a blog post for the Orbit Books site was “favorite fantasy dragons” with a lead-in to Kings of the North.    Those of you around in the great burgeoning of SF/F in the late 1960s and 1970s will remember that “dragons” were fairly common.    Some belonged to older mythologies  and some had been softened and tamed and made almost bland.

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One of the problems facing anyone trying to run a large establishment new to them is staff.   Old staff–competent?  Trustworthy?   Or dishonest, lazy, troublemakers?    New brooms who have done this before may sweep clean, but someone coming into a completely strange situation may not know where to start, how to evaluate any existing staff, and where the organization needs shoring up.

So it is with Dorrin Verrakai, who would be quite comfortable running the North Marches stronghold–a familiar military establishment–but not the Verrakai holdings.    By escaping from her ancestral home, and absenting herself from the Tsaian court, she’s ensured not only her survival but her ignorance.    A military camp and a ducal household (especially with all those now-orphaned children)  have little in common.  Hence this snippet.

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As I’m writing this at almost 10pm, we’re coming up on the changeover from 41 days to the release of Kings of the North to 40 days (which, as anyone in our choir would tell you, at this time of year leads inextricably to “Forty days and forty nights…” (a Lenten hymn.)

And then…less than 40 days to release.   At this point, I always get twitchy, edgy, worried.   My brain invents disasters that will make this release not like any other release, but a total unmitigated failure.    The drama that normally goes into the plot goes into my daily life. Read the rest of this entry »

Book IV is now just over 34,000 words.    At the moment, it seems to be settled into a more relaxed pace as I figure out some details I hadn’t needed to know before.    I have Tsaian dukes figured out, pretty much, but not all the counts and barons.  Um….that would be none of the counts and barons, except the names of the ones on the Royal Council.  Who’s hot-tempered?  Who’s phlegmatic?  Who leaps to conclusions?  Etc.  Moreover, who has a marriageable daughter?

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This book…I’ll swear this book wants to drive its writer crazy.   Where did this new character come from?   And why, once she arrived, didn’t she behave like a normal character (if Kuakkgani are ever normal, that is?)    Not only do I now know a lot more about how someone becomes a Kuakgan (some of it I knew years ago, but I’ve learned more in the past couple of years) but I just found out what can happen to a young (in experience) Kuakgan during his/her first spring out in the world.

“The green blood is strong in this one…”

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Something has been brooding in the depths of the plot for this entire world (not just this book, or the previous, but I’m finding its shadows on sonar of the oldest–in story time–books, Gird & Luap as I re-read them for continuity)  for years.   Now it’s rising slowly  into view.   These are foundation-level conflicts that I’ve never really examined, having just discovered outcrops of apparent bedrock on which to put the foundations of the world 27-28  years ago.

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Because of the ARC contest…I started thinking about trying to host all (OK, only the main) characters for a big dinner myself….sort of a mini-convention of Paksworld characters.

The long, long table outside (hey, I get to control the weather for this one–crisp, cool, sunny.  The best autumn weather.)    The meetings, the greetings, the eating, the conversation–I really would love to hear them talking when there’s no need for it to fit into a story context.   Read the rest of this entry »

So I left Atlanta this morning and wrote 2700+ words on the train, mostly about poor (ummph, you don’t know him yet.  Let’s just say that he’s young and was brash, but reality has laid some clue-bats on him lately.   I didn’t expect he’d ever become a POV character, as he wasn’t my favorite of the available young-and-brash stock, but sometimes they simply o’er leap all obstacles to find themselves on center stage with very important lines to say–and say them with panache.  Or some word of that type.

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The Thursday and Friday were fizzles as far as writing was concerned, and Saturday wasn’t especially good, but did produce something, and this evening the scenes I’d been contemplating while driving to and from church today came alive, so I made both my week goal of 10,0oo words and I’m on track to meet  my month goal as of midnight Sunday (yes, it’s after midnight–just finished work at 11:54.)

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