Paksworld

I was working on the story collection this past week, among other chores, and suddenly wondered if one of last summer’s that I really wanted in, but had seemed gone for good due to a careless deletion, might have been attached to an email I sent to a friend last fall before the flash drive crashed.   And lo! there it was.  An earlier draft but there.  And in working it over again, a better ending came to me.

Until I’ve talked to Lisa, at my agent’s office, I won’t know if this is the *final* set of works in the new collection, or the final draft of the previously unpublished ones,  or if they’ll be in the same order.  (The order makes sense to me, but…not an editor.)

Final Honor.   A late sequel to “Mercenary’s Honor” (set 7-10 years after the first story) in one of the previous collections,  originally in SHATTERED SHIELDS.

Destinies.   A close sequel to “Consequences” in last year’s DEEDS OF YOUTH.

Judgment.  Longish novella, originally included in THE DRAGON QUINTET, and I think the first story that included a dragon (let alone *that* Dragon) in Paksworld.

My Princess.  A story out of deep Paksworld history, from Old Aare before the disasters there.

Valley of Death. Also an Old Aare story, but the Sandlord’s advance was already going on.

Bargains.  Very short, and my first fiction sale.

The total wordage of these is a little short, but there will be intros, and if I can find or come up with something more in the 2000 words range, I’ll add that.

But mostly I’ll be concentrating on the Horngard book.

Meanwhile, in the “out and about” section, I expect to be on the *virtual* programming list for NASFiC this year.  It’s in Buffalo, NY, in July, but I’ll be here in Texas instead.    Not yet up for that long a trip, and I’ve had a couple more falls, both apparently related to sudden dives of blood pressure.   Need to get steadier.  I also expect to be at ArmadilloCon in Austin, in early September.   More on both later.   Austin’s familiar enough that I don’t need to worry too much about falling over.

Just a couple of days ago, while organizing some of the stacks of paper, old notebooks, etc. in one of the rooms, my Organizer in Chief found a print-out of a story I hadn’t been able to find on any current storage unit…since last fall’s demise of the flash drive which had held the backup of the hard drive that self-destructed a year ago.   It was one I had planned to use the next short-fiction collection, and a hard loss, since unlike some stories, it was difficult to write and would be very difficult to *rewrite* in a way that I’d like.  I’d tried.

So Kate’s finding it  was a huge boost to my mood.   It was a photocopy of an earlier version with a lot of editing marks on it (scratch-outs, inserted words, scribbles between lines, etc.)  but it was essentially whole.  We scanned it into the computer, then took the .pdf and converted it (not without some problems…the conversion process did not like my handwritten marks!!) to a .docx version.   I’ve spent quite a few hours trying to make Word behave (!!!! to Microsoft designers of that annoying software!) and retain the instructions (double-space…not single, not multiple, just plain old double-space.  Using the font I want, not the font Word wants.  With no added space between paragraphs, an indented first line ONLY, and no sudden lurches into centered text, right-justified text, etc. etc. etc.)     It’s going to take multiple corrective runs, but at least I’ve got it.

It’s from Old Aare, when the Sandlord’s great drought was just beginning to cause social/economic upheaval and the shift of populations across the continent.  And it *will* be in the new collection and I will be glad of it.   The other “Old Aare” story in that group is the previously published “My Princess” from the DAW anthology Warrior Princesses.   Also in the new collection is “Judgment” from The Dragon Quintet, and the story “Destinies” which is a follow-on to the story “Consequences” in the previous collection Deeds of Youth.  And another one or two, whatever will fit into the word count.

The proof copy of Deeds of Youth, that’s what!

Because I’m a writer with a fat glob of Ego, I took a picture of it lying on its padded yellow envelope for posterity or at least later gleeful gloating over just as I’m sitting here now with the book beside me, periodically opening it and reading more.  Yes, I could call up the stories on the screen and read them off the file, but…it’s a real, physical BOOK, with pages, and I can look at it and touch it  and feel the smoothness of the pages and (on and on and on.  Did I remember to admit the large glob of Ego?  Yes?  OK.

I really, really needed to see another new book with my name on it.  Yes, some of the stories were published before but…in this format, it’s new.

I can’t remember if I’ve listed the contents before, so I’ll do that now.   I know I have said before that the protagonists in the stories (each different) are older in each successive story.

“Bad Day at Duke’s East”

“The Dun Mare’s Grandchild”

“Dream’s Quarry”

“Gifts”

“First Blood”

“Mercenary’s Honor”

“Consequences”

Realizing now I should’ve taken a picture of the inside somewhere too.  DUH.  Tomorrow, maybe.  You can see by the shadow it’s not just a cover flat kind of thing, it’s got thickness.  But I’ve typoed almost every word in this sentence…BED NOW!

…I don’t yet have permission to reveal it, and I can’t figure out how to make it show up in an email (did a test with a friend…got the link but it did not work)  and clicking on the image itself, with this computer, doesn’t yield the “copy image” choice.  It just enlarges or goes back to the other size.

What cover? you ask.  The cover for Deeds of Youth.  Tara, the designer, found a really good green-leather background for it, that will go with the dark red of Deeds of Honor.  Cover uses the same font for the title, the gold stuff is all gold just as it was, and between the change of title and a II  added to the line “paksenarrion world stories” people should not confuse I and II.  When I get permission to share, and when I have loaded Paint Shop Pro into this computer so I can play with images in the software, I’ll post it.  I like it a lot!

Meanwhile, the busy (but not organized) brain has worked out why King Mikeli’s being so stubborn about something in Horngard I, and who can unstick him a couple of weeks earlier, thus not having a long, long stretch that my agent thinks is dull for readers rather than tedious for one of teh characters.  Of course Dragon’s quick idea to mmph the ;ukmph into the xzllz is still a bit of a problem….and creates other problems, which is always good for the plot unless it convinces readers it’s totally impossibly stupid and a creature like Dragon would never think of it.  (Oh, yes he would.  Did.)

Will there be other exciting news over the next few weeks?  Probably not, but not *certainly* not.  Agent is headed for the London Book Fair later this month for a couple of weeks of connecting with his foreign (to us) fellow agents in Europe and getting their input.  He’ll be at the Nebulas in Anaheim not long after he gets back.   I’ll be working on that little blobby bit  in Horngard I and also posting more.

The seven stories of Deeds of Youth have been combed over and checked again and again; the two that were serialized here have had a few minor changes made.  One has never been “out in public” yet.  Those three (two seen in the blog, one never) will get a professional polish from a copy editor; the other four, suppposedly (I HOPE!) clean enough copies are as they appeared in the anthologies.  I’m hoping Agent agrees to use the same basic cover design with the new title and the background in green “antique-leather) behind the gold lettering.  I do not yet have a release date, but I expect to have the date within a few weeks (that’s how it happened last time) and it should be out this year for sure.

Back to working on Horngard I.

Between the ice storm, the aftermath of the ice storm (heavy rain onto the melted ice) , some power outages and a total failure of plumbing, the past few weeks have been hectic and requiered a lot of “adjustment” to daily life.   Having both toilets nonfunctional for a week + days, and the septic tank having to be pumped, and such…not the most fun in the world.  But we’re lucky that it’s now back together and functioning.

We’ve had fifteen inches of rain in the last 30 days.  More than half an average year’s rainfall.  Five and a half of it in the previous 48 hours, running through the barn aisle into the dirt-floored horse stalls and loafing area.   Extraordinary rain starting last fall with a deluge and flash flood…so we have gorgeous wildflowers  and water running for weeks at a time across the near meadow.   My new horse is great except for the continuing physical problems; she spent a month at the vet’s getting started on fixing one of them, a deep-seated chronic hoof infection causing repeated abscesses.  The vet tells me the X-ray evidence and what he saw cutting on the sole of her hoof is that it’s been going on for years.   We won’t know if she can possibly recover until her hoof grows out completely, which may be in September, but maybe not since she can’t go out to be worked on wet ground–and working a horse is what stimulates hoof growth. However,  her abscess hasn’t recurred since March 25, when she came home from the vet clinic, and it’s been 4 full weeks since she came off the antibiotic.   After she came home, I was told I could ride her–should ride her–every day if possible, but most days it hasn’t been.  So almost every time I get on her is a re-start.  She’s got a great feel, when she calms down from “You’re going to get on me AGAIN?  I thought you gave that up forever!” and jigging a lot.   But we make progress in other ways.   I do what I can in the barn, though today…what a mess.  And it’s cloudy and there’s not a drying wind.   If not for the need to keep her bad hoof dry and clean (it’s always in a medicated wrap, inside a hoof boot, but water and mud can go over the top of the hoof boot if deep enough–hence restrictions)  I could be out shlooping through the mud with her.

And meanwhile, some Paksworld news.  The audio book of DEEDS OF HONOR will be starting production soon; I’m at the stage of communicating with the voice actor about pronunciations and such.    I’ll be working on that today….and  until it’s done.

I went to my first HS reunion ever (56th for those who’ve been going regularly) and that was very interesting.  I’m glad I went, though I was sick (caught a cold probably Easter Sunday, and was still in medias res on the Saturday after) and recognized only two people right off the bat.    Both I’d known in elementary school, and one before that.  It’s unusual for me to recognize people after a break–my lousy face recognition processor–so a relief to instantly know *that* had to be who it was.

It’s become obvious in the last year and almost-three-months since the concussion that it’s going to take a lot longer for some of the symptoms to resolve, if they do.  The remaining difficulties are typical of post-concussion problems–but overlap with typical age-related problems.   All very depressing, if you dwell on them, and I’m trying not to, though a writer having difficulties with language *at all* raises the anxiety level.  When typing, I make mistakes of a type I never used to make, thinking one word and typing another.  Plain typos I’ve always made–reversing letters, leaving one out.  But these are true cognitive (not fingering) mistakes.  Grrr.  I see them when I re-read a Facebook post or a tweet, but it’s annoying and scary both.   Fiction doesn’t hold together yet–the plot-daemon, that faithful assistant, seems to wake up only in spurts, and since I’ve never outlined  (teachers TOLD me I should always outline)  when I lose the scent or the tracks or whatever it is that has always led me onward…I sit there staring at the page with no idea at all what to do.  Yet in reading fiction, I’m back to my old speed and analytical ability (I’m plowing through Cherryh’s Foreigner series again, in which I’d missed a few books over the years, and holding the first sixteen books (so far) in my head and finding the connections, the foreshadowing, the ways she’s held this huge and complex and multi-layered series together.)  But I’m more easily distracted by real-world things, both good and not-so, when I try to forge ahead on either of the two projects begun and not really advancing.

But I intend to keep trying, while also working on general health issues (now better, not done yet, though) and pushing the envelope as much as possible.   The stories are in there somewhere.

The good news:

Deeds of Honor is now available for the Nook direct from Barnes & Noble:

Looks like the powers that be have approved a cover design, and I like it.

So, here ’tis.    There might still be changes, but I suspect this is it.

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Got a call today from my agent’s office, that the cover copy person is working on cover copy (the enticing description of what’s inside) for the short fiction collection. The cover design itself is “somewhere” having “something” done (I don’t know where or what yet, so the quote marks are just a hint at that.) However, this is progress. Things are moving. No schedule yet and probably won’t be until the cover’s done and approved.
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