Paksworld

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.

A fancy way of saying that the manuscript just made 100,000+ words a few minutes ago, and thus made it to that mark by midnight of July 31.  Almost didn’t, but did.

In August, I need to throw at least another 20,000 words into the cauldron, stir vigorously, and start pulling out the things that don’t belong, adding the things that go in last or (confession time) were just forgotten,  and so on.  And so on.   Serious driving for daily words will continue until the 120,000 point–after that it’s revision, revision, revision,  which often means the word count goes up and down like a yo-yo.

What can I tell you?   I like how the story’s shaping.   It needs a lot of revision, but the skeleton’s basically sound (barring some places where the arm bone isn’t connected to the backbone, and the foot bones are three feet away from the ankle bone and so on.)   I think it will be  a good Vatta story.  The main characters have come back to life and feel real though one or two still have a big of haze at the edges.  (Not Ky.  Not Rafe.  Not Stella.)

On Thursday at 11:30 am, I will be the author guest at Coffee with the Author,  an event sponsored by Holy Grounds, the coffee/book/gift shop at St. David’s Episcopal Church downtown.   There’s a half hour interview/Q&A/etc.  with Jennifer Stayton of KUT keeping the program on track and on time.   Afterwards, lunch downtown sounds like a good idea–including at St. David’s.

This should be fun; I’m really looking forward to it, and hope for good weather so we can enjoy the outdoor terrace–but if it rains there’s plenty of inside space too.

For those in the area but unfamiliar with the venue, St. David’s is between San Jacinto and Trinity, between 7th and 8th–it, and its parking garage, take up the whole block.   The entrance to the church is across the street from the Omni Hotel.   There’s parking available in the garage (you can sign in at the main desk to get a parking voucher) or you can take a bus.

The bookstore will have copies of The Speed of Dark and Oath of Fealty if you don’t have them already and I will be bringing, for show & tell, the proof copy of Deeds of Honor, the print-on-demand paperback of my first indie-published eBook.

If you’re in the area, and can come, I’d love to see you there.

The concert on January 26 was amazing.   Everyone had worked so hard and so well getting ready for it, and the weather (which had been icky all week–that kind of “weeping” cold winter rain)  cleared off so it was a perfectly clear, sunny afternoon, not too hot or too cold.    The musicians were *wonderful*–not just talented musicians but genuinely nice people, lovely people.   And though I’d been just a little scared of bringing a chamber music string quartet to this community…it was a hit.  Everybody liked it (well, maybe the 10 yo boy was tired of it by the long second half, but not the rest).   I could feel the electricity from audience to musicians and back.   Everything I’d worried about (how will the acoustics be in that space?  What about having only one restroom?  What if not enough people come?  What if, what if, what if (a novelist can imagine complications and disasters VERY easily)  didn’t happen and better things did.

Read the rest of this entry »