Paksworld

So in my mind (and partly on paper) I had even the new things more or less organized, I thought.    Certain things for Monday, certain things for Tuesday, then Wednesday, then a day to pack and prepare for the trip to College Station, with a wary eye on the weather (my preferred route avoids most major highways, but isn’t OK if there’s heavy rain…)   Monday ran almost (!) to schedule, except I worked on only one pieces of music and could not finish the blog post for UK-editor.   It looked stupid.  (Trust me: I can write stupid.)

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I emailed the synopsis off to Editor-UK this morning, then held horses for the farrier.   Horses are trimmed.   Mac pinned his ears a couple of times but gave it up after we weren’t intimidated.   Illusion stood out in the falling mist looking pitiful until it was his turn.    So I put Mac “out” (in the main horse lot) and kept Illusion in the smaller barn lot where I can check on him easily.

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My birthday present to you is posting Chapter 2 of Oath of Fealty on the Paksworld website:

http://www.paksworld.com/excerpt-oathfealty.html

There’s also a link to Del Rey’s posting of Chapter 1, for those who are a bit behind.

I’m supposed to write a synopsis of Kings of the North, and since the book is essentially done (barring the revisions I’m working on) you’d think that would be easy.   Or some of you would.  Some of you may suffer from a-synopsisism, a condition in which writing synopsis is only slightly more difficult and painful than pulling off your toenails one by one.

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Could not resist.  Could. Not. Resist.    So what do the next ten days have in them, besides waiting for Oath of Fealty’s release?    Not an orgy of anticipation, because Lifestuff rolls on, ignoring a writer’s desire to wallow for even one day in the joys of  authorship.    Here’s a sample:

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Some of you may remember the posts I did last year during the Spring Revision Season, but some of you weren’t here yet, so I’ll chatter away as if you couldn’t look up the posts by category and find them (but go ahead if you want.)   Editor-revisions are basically the same as any other revision except that Editor has more experience and more clout even than DRW and Karen S- and Ellen M-.

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You would be SO happy that Editor sends me these, if you knew what gets fixed before you ever see the book.   I know some of  you think you’d like the raw, untouched text better, but…no.  Seriously,  editors…and Editor in particular…make books better.  So did the alpha readers and my agent, all of whom had comments that made me rethink some things.

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Distractions of the usual type are things that must be done–distractions not sought out, but imposed.   For instance, official paperwork that must be filed by a given date,  business mail that must be dealt with, scheduled maintenance of human, animal, machine, repairs of human, animal, machine, house.   Then there are the everyday distractions of friends, family, online places to socialize.

But then…then come the biggies.    For me, it’s something I don’t know much about, that comes to my attention in a time and way that creates an automatic pursuit response:  facts known to exist, that I don’t know yet, are like the squeaking of a mouse to a fox, or the scent of a fox to the hounds..and these are the hardest distractions for me to resist.

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Editor has now read Kings of the North and says she really likes it.   I’ll be diving into revisions when she sends me her notes, but it sounds from her email that the revisions won’t conflict with anything now in Book III, which means I can push forward strongly.   Happy dance now taking place.

As this is March 1, in 15 days Oath of Fealty will hit the streets in the US.    If any of you are near Austin, Texas,  I’m doing a book signing on Tuesday, March 16, at Book People (6th and Lamar) at 7 pm.   Earlier (4 – 5 pm CST) I’ll be doing an online chat at Suvudu with John Hemry (writing as Jack Campbell, author of the Lost Fleet series) and editor Betsy Mitchell, who will try to keep John and me from taking off into the wild blue.

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