Paksworld

And I now have permission to share.  

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I’ve seen the cover art for Oath of Fealty from the Del Rey office.  Oh, wow!  It’s not what I imagined it would be, so it took me a moment to refocus my brain, but it’s stunning and a strong design.    (And it should be easy to notice on bookshelves, hurray!)

As soon as they let me, I’ll post an image.

Bouncing Author!

First: Happy Canada Day to you Canadians.

Second:   This may make you laugh.  It did me.   Critical scene–critical in terms of reader spatial orientation as well as reader “what’s happening” orientation.

And I got both direction (east v. west) and possibility wrong.   It was a plot bomb, and I was writing as fast as I could, but still!  East is east and west is west and if you go the wrong way you end up in the wrong place.   And one little three-letter word (”not”)  makes a huge difference.

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This morning I was goofing off by starting book three,  which meant I needed to check a few things from one and two.

It’s a fairly minor plot point (so far) so I don’t think it’s hugely spoilerish to reveal a little.    Some of Our Folks are in Aarenis, on a contract with Cortes Vonja to deal with brigands.  Standard, ordinary, until they find some swords.  One of the swords is a  Halveric sword, which is odd because the Halverics were careful to recover the arms of their wounded and dead.

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Though Paks is not a POV character in this group of books, she’s still a catalyst and, as such, quite busy.  I don’t know everything she’s been up to, but some of it I do, and it’s been fascinating to see how she operates, as a paladin.

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4800 words so far today.

164,800-something for the book.

And two pages into the next chapter, I realized I had written the end, at the end of the previous chapter.  It may grow or shrink some, but the skeleton and most of the flesh are there.

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Book continues its happy gallop down the to the finish line, paying no attention to its writer.

I will say it’s interesting.   Though the newly introduced “character” has a regrettable tendency to spout infodump, I think it’s telling me, and it will be easy to prune that away so readers don’t have to deal with it.   (You think? comes the little voice in my head.  One of the little voices.)

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Make for exciting stories.

Today, when I planned to do a whole lot of other stuff, has produced, so far, 2600 words and a character I did not anticipate in any way.

In other words, another plot bomb.  A BIG plot bomb.  A big enough plot bomb that I’m questioning whether it’s really a plot bomb or maybe I’ve gone totally bonkers.  True, books do produce more plot bombs toward the end (usually, if they have any…) but this…

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Just over 155,000 words.    I have another two days and then the copy edits should be here.   The more I can get done before they arrive, the better, but it’s almost 1 am and I have to sleep…

The plot bomb is now written out; the scene I needed research for is done, and some after-scene scenes as well.   In addition, the stuff 100 pages back is done, all the ends tucked in (well, for now) and all the on-the-spot-thought processes tidied away (thanks to Mr. Delete Button.)

Incidentally, we had a record high today (well what today was in the daytime, not today-by-the-clock) and the day before, and are expected to make a record again tomorrow (today-by-the-clock.)  Yes, it’s been well over 100F and no, we don’t like it.  Nothing likes it.

Not an easy day’s work but a successful one.

A small plot bomb exploded today and showered plot-fragments all over this end of the book.

I’m not through writing out the whole plot-bomb, but it’s definitely lively.   (This plot bomb came with a research assignment…”Check with D about the performance of this weapon…”)

There was a good guy and a bad guy.