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Yes, this afternoon I reached 150,000 words-and-a-bit, which is the “about right” length for a Paksworld book. Was so gleeful I made a batch of fudge brownies (forgetting that with a temporary crown on one tooth, fudge is not the best idea…) Celebration time. We had fried chicken for supper, brownie with ice cream to follow. It’s not all done…one major component needs to be written, and a dull boring blob of a beginning needs to be ripped off and replaced with a crisp, sparkling, start, but…it’ll be a much easier balancing act with 150,000 *mostly* right words keeping it on track and zipping along.
Today’s snippet is also posted in the elizabethmoon.com blog, so you needn’t look there for extras today.
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By dark, he had achieved, he thought, the ugliest point ever put on the end of a pole, but it would hurt if it hit you right, and it didn’t fall off or break when he jabbed at a tree section with it.
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This is Aris, the not yet qualified blacksmith, king’s friend, duke’s third son, horse trainer, and former squire to Duke Arcolin until a series of unfortunate events sent him….well, you’ll have to find out in the book itself.
Comment by Juim DeWitt — August 25, 2022 @ 12:21 pm
Can’t wait.
But Steven Brust, whose Vlad Taltos series has been running nearly as long as Paks World, reports the time from his delivery of the 16th installment to publication and release is at least 16 months. The next installment of Misty Lackey’s Valdemar series has been pushed back. Twice.
I want to read the new book *right now* but I fear there may be some delays.
Comment by Marcy — August 26, 2022 @ 6:09 pm
Sooo excited for this.
I’ve read the previous books multiple times, then started rationing myself so I wouldn’t wear them out as there wouldn’t be any more.
Except now there will. (Happy dance)
Thanks for keeping us updated.
Comment by Jim DeWitt — September 6, 2022 @ 11:53 am
“Please, Ms. Moon, may I have some more please?”
Comment by elizabeth — September 12, 2022 @ 6:44 am
In face, just posted that the first draft is done and the structural revision draft (first revision draft) is also done.
More snippets will come when I get back & recover from today’s dental extravaganza.
Comment by elizabeth — September 19, 2022 @ 9:45 pm
Revision’s going fairly well, interrupted by dental stuff. Trust me, unless you’re a dentist (and maybe even then) you don’t want to hear all about it. Today was another appointment that I had thought would be a quick look and “Great, it’s healing well, go home” but turned out to be “No, actually, you get the shots in your jaw again, we’re opening it up, flushing out all the meds and then going after that other one that we couldn’t get into last time but put some stuff on to dissolve the calcifications…” so it was an hour of tinkering in the chair, and then it’s been quite uncomfortable once the anesthetic wore off. It started to ease about 5 hours in, but then came back and has been up and down since.
However, assuming tomorrow will be better (optimism is always useful in these things) then I should be able to get going on the chapter summaries tomorrow, and finish the rest of the level 2 revision by the end of the week…maybe? Followed by the level 3, after which it gets a last nitpicking read by a nitpicker (the sort of person you don’t let near your ms until you think it’s done, because while you’re trying to think about sequencing or structure of whether a bit of dialogue is in character, they’ll point out typos or a misplaced comma that might be in something that won’t be there in the next level anyway…) When a nitpicker and I both think it’s a clean read, it goes to my agent, and from then on other people will find everything we’ve missed and tell me about it… As they should!!! I hope my agent can get take a look at it before the holidays…if so there’s a slim chance it might get on a late ’23 schedule, but more likely ’24. Sad but true. Other people who didn’t lose 4 1/2 years out of their writing life have been producing perfectly good books that deserve to be in print and available to people have them already on the ’23 schedule. It wasn’t my fault (other than being determined to get on a horse that was determined not to have me on her back and bucked while I was mounting, a time when a rider is particularly vulnerable…and that WAS my fault; I knew the mare was not happy about it.) Could I have ridden out her buck if I’d been up and solidly in the saddle…mmm. Good question. It had been a long time since I’d ridden even a little buck-jump or kick-up. Anyway…wasn’t my fault partly, and wasn’t the fault of any of the writers who quickly took over the openings I left in schedules by not being available as a choice. I do, however, hope to get back in the game.
Comment by elizabeth — September 19, 2022 @ 9:47 pm
Thank you (all of you, since I’m writing this with the dental ouch and may miss saying this to everyone) for your continuing interest in what I write. I’m in a happy dance mood myself as this thing has come together and it’s clear my WriterBrain is functioning for both the writing and the revision end of things.
Comment by elizabeth — September 19, 2022 @ 9:59 pm
Working on it, working on it…