Paksworld

I have finished (structurally) another story in Paksworld, although it’s still in the polishing phase.  I would like it to be a tight little thing about 5000 words, but of course it would like to stretch all boundaries and and grow…so I’m patiently snipping sprouts and hoping the topiary approach works.

It is a Horngard side story and some of it occurs while exciting & suspenseful things are happening in Horngard, which is why if shared now it’s spoilerish…no, actually it IS a spoiler if shared whole.  Or maybe…(eyeing it sideways and up and down)…it’s spoilering several aspects of Horngard I.   On the other hand, it’s a bouncy, energetic story and I’m happy with it and am dying to share it.  I would’ve shared it with a good friend last night or this morning, to get her comments (she gives excellent comment) BUT I’m having problems with phone quality, hers and mine, and her husband can be impatient, and was in an impatient mood today, it seemed like.  He, like one of their sons, is usually in a mood to hurry someone along, which I find very tiring these days.  It’s also affected her ability to listen and respond to the whole store, since she said it was starting too slowly one paragraph in. That’s not like her, and neither of the other first readers (both now unavailable)  commented that this draft’s beginning was slow.

ANYway.  Since she’s hundreds of miles away at this point and he seems to be charging around at full speed wanting her to come along here, come along there, I’m extremely tempted to share one ore more snippets with you, steering around the things you should not know, before having read Horngard I.   Maybe just talk about the protag, who’s a new person on the scene here.

Grethan D’Anzo is a small (one-wagon) trader specializing in supplying mercenary units with foodstuffs.  A sutler, in fact.  She’s the senior partner in the inherited business (“D’Anzo Sutlers”) with her sister, who is blind.  Small traders are often used by larger traders to provide part of an order, and since a small trader can’t afford to hire guards for their one wagon, they usually join the caravan of a larger trader, who charges a fee for the services the large trader provides: guards for the whole caravan.  This of course reduces the already smaller profit of the one-wagon snall trader.  They are often limited to trade within one city and its immediate environs.   The Sutlers Guild grades sutlers by their reputation for  the *volume* of goods sold.   This often (usually) determines what level of licensing they can achieve in each city where they do business.  And *that* is revealed by how many digits their license has.  Low-numbers are great numbers.  Four digit numbers…much lower tier.  Grethan has a 4-digit license in Valdaire and can’t even get a license in Foss Council cities: she’s considered not worth a space in their markets.

So when she realizes a new market may be opening somewhere else, she wants to pack a wagon and go, hoping to get there in time for a low-number license.  But she’s never been there, it’s a long way, there may be a war, and it costs to take time off and lose even the piddly profit she can make where she is.   If she makes it, she’ll be much better off, but if anything goes wrong, she’ll be in a hole deeper than she’s been.

Last stitch is still annoying me.  Lots of good things have been accomplished with Kate’s help, but I will need to keep at it after she goes home next week.  And for the next few days, of course, as well.   Boxes and bags of stuff has gone out in the trash.  Yarn and stacks of off-season clothes have gone into bins for later final sort and storage.  All the tech stuff but one has been accomplished, including some unexpected wins and some (expected but not exactly welcome) fails.  The most visible difference is in my study, but there’s more to do there, too, and no room is *completely* done: three are markedly better, however.

I have managed to pull off an additional thing…a thank=you to the ER crews at the hospital, which should cheer them up when working on a holiday weekend.   Really, REALLY happy with the cooperation of a pizza shop!!  And a Paksworl-related short thing is coming together nicely, though I can’t work on it steadily while we’re trying to do this other stuff.

Deeds of Youth release date (AKA book birthdahy) is JULY !8

LINKS:
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Deeds-Youth-Paksenarrion-World-Chronicles-ebook/dp/B0C3P6CFVM/?tag=awfulagent-20
B&N: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/deeds-of-youth-elizabeth-moon/1143406204?ean=9781625676375
Kobo: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/deeds-of-youth
Google: https://play.google.com/store/books/details/Elizabeth_Moon_Deeds_of_Youth?id=BLm7EAAAQBAJ
iBooks: https://apple.co/444oq0A

Part VI

So when he heard the rapid hoofbeats coming up from behind, and the voice yelling at the horse, followed by a dust-blurred  sight of the horse bucking along and the rider finally being launched, he knew both who it was, and what had happened. The Marrakai were known for breeding good horses, but this kirgan was not, Kieri thought, a good horseman.  The horse was, obviously, both young and difficult, a red stallion with one white foot that had traveled hollow-backed and crooked every time Kieri had seen it pass.  He’d seen the young man launched before, and noticed the same pattern every time.

Except that this time the horse ran toward his unit, and Kieri caught the trailing rein.  One problem was obvious and he reached out to fix it.

“Let go of my horse, you–!” The young man stumbled toward him.

“I’m but settling him,” Kieri said, in as easy a voice as he owned.  “The curb chain wasn’t adjusted correctly.”

“What do you know about curb chains!  You don’t even have a horse.”  The young man was angry, having been launched right in front of everyone clustered around the prince.

“I have had,” Kieri said, unhooking the chain, giving it a twist, and hooking it again with the chain flat and the hook pointed away from the horse. The horse bumped him with its nose.  Most horses liked him, he’d found out at Aliam’s.

“I suppose you think you can ride better than I do!”  Still angry, still not thinking, was Kieri’s analysis, and he saw other faces turned to this conversation.  Oh well, sometimes truth hurt.

“I can ride; I do not judge myself an expert.”

“Well, I am,” the youth said, just as loud, and having come near enough grabbed the opposite rein and yanked hard.  The horse threw up its head, half-reared and bumped the youth with its shoulder.  He lost his grip and went down again.

“YOU did that!” he said, even louder, reaching for his sword.

This was not, Kieri told himself, going to end well whatever he did.  He flipped the reins over the horse’s head and his sergeant ran up and took them, clearing space.  He rocked just a bit, heel to toe, finding his best balance on this uneven surface, but not moving to draw. Four inches of steel showed above the boy’s scabbard.  But out of the dust another voice intervened.

“Kirgan Marrakai! Do I see you drawing on one of my commanders?  Stand where you are, sir.”

“Sir prince, I was only–”

“Silence.” Then, to someone else, the Prince said “Tell Duke Marrakai I would speak with him.” A man ran off to the side.  The entire procession had stopped by now; the dust settled slowly.  Kieri looked at the Prince, who looked back at him and nodded at Kieri’s empty hands.  “Is the horse hurt, Captain?”

“No, my lord prince.”

“Good.  Did I hear you correctly, there was an error of adjustment of the bit?”

“The curb chain, my lord prince.  It had not been twisted quite flat, and the hook pointed inward.”

“Anything else?”

“If it were my horse I would check the saddle adjustment; it seemed to me that it had perhaps slipped a bit to one side while being girthed.  But the dust could have obscured my view, and it was bucking.”

Duke Marrakai rode up.  “My lord prince.”

“Yes, I wish your opinion.”

The Duke’s gaze shifted from his son to the Prince, Kieri, the horse, and back to the Prince.  “Yes, my lord.”

“Who is at fault if a horse is bitted incorrectly, perhaps not girthed correctly, and bucks in consequence?”

“The rider,” the Duke said promptly.

“Even if a groom tacks it up for the rider?”

“Yes, my lord, always.  The rider must check everything before mounting.  May I ask what happened?”

“You know your son’s horse bucks frequently?”

“Yes.  It is young.  I advised him to bring a more experienced mount, but he insisted on bringing this one.”

“If it is shown that someone else, someone who adjusted or adjusts the tack, can ride the horse the rest of the morning without it bucking…what would you think.”

The Duke scowled at his son.  “I would think the rider–in this case my son–had been negligent in checking his tack.”

“And what would you do?”

“I could send him home,” the Duke offered.

“And what good would that do for the horse?” the Crown Prince asked the sky, and then went on without giving the Duke time to answer.  “I tell you what, Duke Marrakai: if you will allow, I will set this rider’s punishment myself.  First we shall see to the matter of negligence.  Captain, bring the horse here.  Duke, you and I will inspect the tack.”

This is mostly echoed from the Universes blog, so no use going there for more.

Stage Three overlaps Stage Two, because–especially this time–there’s no reason to ignore 3rd level problems while reading aloud to someone from the computer screen (there is no print-out yet.)    So if I find an entire paragraph that’s now redundant (a Stage Two problem) I just delete it,  or a temporal-sequence problem,  I mark that section in red and fix it when through reading, and if I find a typo (and boyoboy do I find typoes!)  I fix it.  Same with “infelicitous phrasing,”  doubled doubled words, and so on.

Every book *should* have (can easily have if you don’t have a submission deadline)  at least three full length revisions: structural, constructional, surface polish.  And also at least three readings: one of them voiced, out loud, two by readers with somewhat different ages/backgrounds, etc.  This time my original first-reader (Rancherfriend Ellen) can no longer read, because of severe macular degeneration, so I’ve been calling her up every day and reading a chapter or two to her, as I’ve finished that part’s stage two (or think I have.  She was a superb first reader, and she notices even hearing the book that “you said that already last time–we don’t need that bit.”   This has been good for both of us.

DRW (Readerfriend DavidW)  is another first reader, and I’m about to go to R-, who has been busy with other things while I worked on it, and combines well as a stage 2 and stage 3 reader because he picks nits like nobody’s business as well as spotting deeper problems.  He doesn’t read as fast anymore, though.    I’ve also had another first-reader take sporadic looks at it, but she’s got a busy schedule otherwise: she edits, writes, and teaches workshops.

I had wanted to be here two weeks ago, and would have been if not for the tooth problems and a few other complications in our lives, but I’m here now, and the book WILL go off to my agent this week (unless I croak.  Always a consideration when over 75.)   The book is now sitting at 167, 273 words,  and wandering up and down a few at every pass as I fill holes and trim off excess.  Probably will go in to agent close to 170,000.

Farrier comes today, in a couple of hours most likely, so this is just a quick update.

Dedicated Paksworld readers (you never look at Universes blog…<G>)   This one has really stretched my abilities in managing complex sequential and tactical (in the military bits, of which there are quite a few)  stuff.  I’m happy with the outcomes, esp. young Gwenno Marrakai’s particular approaches to dealing with her enemies.    The Marrakai younger generation is able to show that they’re not quite “all one brew, and that a heady one.”   as was said of them years back.   Juris, the king’s best friend, and Gwenno, his younger sister, and Temris *her* younger sister (not to mention Aris, who was Prince Camwyn’s best friend) have–while I was ignoring them writing the two later Vatta books–grown into very individual people.  Even the two youngest, though they’re not that prominent in this book.   (Well, you will meet Julyan and find out why he’s “different.”)

Some of you know I’m a confirmed horse lover.  Horse nut.  Horsey person.  (Take your pick.)

This has been the Year of Three Horses, but #3, Kallie, is definitely The One.  As it happens, she’s a red chestnut with a small star and though not as big as Ky (my first horse, and the one who was the model for Paks’s paladin horse)  she has a similar sort of attitude.    The two months and a week (I think that’s right) since I bought her have done wonders for her–or my trainer has; Kallie’s still in board and training “over there” with more facilities than I have here, including a swimming pool for horses.  She had multiple problems when I first saw her, but thanks to the pre-purchase exam vet and my trainer,  both of whom thought she had potential (though limited from what I’d been thinking), she is now walking and trotting sound, her teeth are no longer causing her pain and mouth injury,  and she has put on muscle in the right places from swimming and being carefully ridden by Trainer and by me.  She looks younger than she did two months ago, though she did have a relapse (hoof abscess) that means keeping a close eye on her.

The Paks-ish moments came at the first, and again occasionally, including today when I did some ground work and longeing with her in the stable arena.   First…she picked me.  When I first saw her, and the state of her front feet, and the generally depressed, miserable expression, I almost walked away.  Didn’t need another horse with hoof problems, and I could tell she had them, though not for sure what.   But after I’d spent a few minutes of closer examination, talking to her, watching her reactions, moving her around a little,  she gave me The Look.   The Look that means “I’m your horse, if you want me. Please want me.”   The expression went from depressed to hopeful.   And the next day, after the PPE vet found the problem with her feet and legs (as he was supposed to) and we discussed it, and then I discussed it with Trainer…I bought a horse that was, at the time, three-legged lame and had a mouthful of pain from lack of dental care.   And have not regretted it for a moment.   She is “hot”–that comes with the breeding (Arabian, mostly from Russian and Polish racing lines, and 1/4 from Crabbet) but she is not wild or crazy…she’s sweet, willing, wants to do the right thing and since we dealt with the multiple sources of pain and problems (vet, farrier, equine chiropractor and prescribed exercise) she’s been *able* to do the right thing, or learn how for the things she hadn’t been taught.  She was raced as a young horse (unsuccessfully), used as a trail horse, taught a little dressage, but basically wasn’t ever the #1 for her owner.  Now she is, and she’s blossomed.   She still has some incurable problems but management should be able to prevent their escalating.

Today,  for one moment (or several) I felt like Paks seeing her horse…she was prancing around, arched neck, tail up, “floating” above the ground in that gorgeous trot many Arabians have.  So beautiful, so elegant and athletic…and then she stopped and turned and looked at me, ears pricked.  “Was THAT good enough for a horse cookie?”

One month after purchase, she’s looking a lot better.   And she loves swimming in the circular pool and could do several laps.

Two months after purchase, she’s looking even better (even on a cloudy chilly day) and showing the effects of therapy.

Computers never cease to amaze me, not always in good ways.  This morning I found a comment on an old post in this blog (so old, that comments to it won’t be posted)  and pulled up the post to check its original date.  It was on horsemanship with respect to fighting on horseback.  While reading back through it, I checked the links…one of which led not to a slow-motion video of a horse doing a flying a change of leads, but to a steamy sex site.  OOPS.  That link has been removed.  I checked the other links.  One was dead as concrete, so I hunted up another example of what needed to be shown, just in case anyone else stumbled across that post.

You’ve heard the saying, that nothing ever on the Internet really disappears…your worst errors can always be pulled up to haunt you…but clearly links can turn into links to somewhere else, or just go 404-page-not-found on you.

If any of you find bad links, defined as “not showing what I intended the link to show” please let me know so I can remove or replace them.

The websites and blogs have all moved to their new host, where they are now live and healthy and ready to receive more posts from Y’r Author.   That happened today, thanks to a rescue by the stalwarts at SFF.net (which is closing down) and Anne Yates-Laberge (whose name I keep typoing…my fingers aren’t there yet–I just typed finters for fingers, too.)   The previous arrangement for the move, Somewhere Else, turned out to lack certain necessary capacities (to the great frustration of Karen, my web-guru since last summer)  and when the end of everyone’s patience was reached,  Anne performed the necessary miracles, rather like Paks arriving at the last moment to save the day.   Read the rest of this entry »

Every person has a toolkit, a set of skills (physical, mental, emotional) that they use to navigate their life.   When you learn something–anything–it becomes part of that toolkit, and the more tools you have, the more of life’s challenges you can handle with less strain than the person without those skills, that knowledge, that attitude.

It’s easy to imagine what tools you need for “basic getting along” when you look at small children who don’t have them yet, and how we help children develop: they need to be able to communicate with others, manage their own bodies and their own emotions, complete the “activities of daily living” (dressing and undressing, keeping themselves clean, feeding themselves, etc.)   I have a book, written maybe 25 years ago, that lays out in detail the skills those authors thought a disabled child had to learn before he or she could live independently.  I was a grown woman who’d been living independently for decades and I hadn’t mastered all those skills!   (I call a plumber or electrician to do some of the things that book mentioned.)

But what about writers?  What is–or should be–in a writer’s toolkit?  What skills, in and out of writing, does a writer have to have,  what’s nice-to-have but not that necessary and what are the specialized tools that are only needed rarely, or by some specialists?   On some Tuesdays I’ll be writing about the writer’s toolkit, and today’s tool is…

Curiosity.  Whether writing nonfiction or fiction or plays or poetry, a writer needs a good stout lump of curiosity.  Trained curiosity.  Focused curiosity.   Curiosity about words (what’s the word for that thing on the end of a fabric shoelace?   What did nice mean before it meant what it means now?), about language as a whole, about, well, everything.   People–what they do, how they do it, and why they do it.    Machines–how they work and how they fail.   Plants, animals, soils, rocks, landforms, weather.

Curiosity keeps new information flowing toward the writer, and that fills the well of imagination, where it can combine with older sensory impressions, facts, opinions, ideas and provide the meat that clothes the bones of a story.   Curiosity makes the research fun, rather than a burden.   The person without curiosity has little motivation to learn, to do any research, to pay attention to other people, to the sights and sounds and smells and flavors of a location.   And that makes for very shallow, very dull writing.

Writers with a high Curiosity Quotient never run out of ideas because they never run out of questions.    “I wonder…” is a thought that should be in every writer’s head at least once a day.  “I wonder why that guy just slammed his mug down and left the coffee shop.   Angry?  Scared?  Just remembered something important?”   “I wonder what’s under this street?”   “I wonder what exactly happens when a goose is sucked into a jet engine–what breaks first?”

Curiosity bothers some people.  It bothers parents when their kids ask embarrassing or inconvenient questions.  It bothers many teachers when a student asks a question that’s off-topic or unexpected, not in the book.  “Don’t look–don’t touch–don’t ask–” is thrown at a lot of kids (at me, too)  and so as adults many people have trained themselves not to let their curiosity out of a box.

But to be a writer, you need curiosity, the kind that leads you to read more, explore more, listen more, look more, smell more, taste more.   A writer’s curiosity is broad, not confined to one topic or one field of knowledge.   Encourage your own curiosity (exercise it if it’s weak!)  It’s OK  to spend a week or a month or a year following a new rabbit trail down the hole and through the whole burrow.   Next week or month, something else will grab your interest.  That’s fine.  Even if you’re working a full-time day job, raising children, and short of money…there are ways to keep your curiosity busy and your imagination’s well filling.

When I was much younger, and of a lower economic status than most other students, I was asked why I wanted to study physics (that being unusual for a female in those days) and answered that I was very curious.  Some wag in the group sneered “I can see that!” and everyone laughed.   (I didn’t yet know that retorting “Fourth term fallacy” might have turned the joke back on the sneerer.)   I did learn that admitting have wide-ranging curiosity–just wanting to learn–wasn’t acceptable for girls like me, but the habit was formed.  I didn’t quit being curious; I did quit talking about it.

I have no idea what that person is doing now, but I can say that being curious–wanting to learn, to understand what I learn, to stretch my mind and stuff more into it–has been a great strategy for me in more than writing.

(mirrored on Universes blog)

Confirmation today that the title Cold Welcome has been approved for the new Vatta book.  Hurray! says the writer.

Though of course I want a warm welcome for it when it finally appears.    But it’s certainly not the kind of reception Ky Vatta expected on her first return to Slotter Key since she left as a disgraced former cadet captaining an old, inefficient, cargo ship slated for destruction at the end of the voyage.

Revision continues on the manuscript, with one bleary eye on the calendar.