Paksworld

Horngard I has been shipped off to my editor at Del Rey.

The next news we want to hear is “yes” but that’s probably months away, if that’s what Anne decides.  Keep your fingers crossed.   I’ll tell you what I know as soon as I know it.

The first chapter of Horngard I is now tighter, cleaner, more direct, less allusive.  Starts in POV of major character.  Sets out the initial situation directly.  Introduces second POV character, hours later than the original start.   Better, in other words.  I’m now charging through the other chapters (agent had a copy I’d sent him in October; I’d lost my copies here, as you know, so it was seeing it very fresh indeed.)    Every place that my eyelids sag (before midnight; sagging at midnight is normal.  Right now I’m waiting for the dryer to finish with a load of wash that suddenly had to be done at about 10:30 pm.)

For instance, Gwennothlin Marrakai is taking her youngest brother Julyan on a trip and includes moving some horses from the Marrakai estate somewhere else.  I had, in the previous file, a sketch map of the journey, a timeline, a note of every horse, its name, its breeding, its color, its size.   Today I was reading along, early in that journey and they stopped for lunch and then…I spent most of a paragraph on the horses.  Not interesting stuff about the horses, not enlivening details that also show I know what I’m describing, but…she helps Julyan get on the horse she wants him to ride that afternoon, and in the process of that tells the reader (only some of whom will care) the horse’s name, breeding, color, and size.  Does any of this matter at any point in the story?  No. Does Julyan care?  No.  I found myself mentally staring at the 11 year old kid, who darn well ought to be able to mount that horse without help, and at the horse (which is not going to DO anything remarkable at any point!) and erased a paragraph.  After lunch they started off upstream on the trail.   It’s not about a mare named Daisy.  It IS about one of the horses in particular, but right now they’re going to ride south, upstream, day after day until they’re….never mind.  Lips are sealed.  THAT bit has details that matter.

More of that section–the travel–will also come out because it’s a separate sort of sequence that ties into the main sequence down the line.   “The Chainsaw of Correction…” is snarling in my ear.

On the other hand, I’m still very happy with the battle scenes.  Gritty.

A week of working with the saber and I’m definitely getting more of a feel, including the feeling of sore shoulders, forearms, and hands.   But right-handed, I can hold the saber out straight in front, arm straight, with much less quivering, and raise the tip and lower the tip to level again, over and over and over….twice as many up/downs as when I started.    Then rotating the wrist, thus the blade, so that sharp edge is to the outside/down, outside/down ten times, then inside/down, inside/down, inside/down ten times.   Elementary first steps to controlling the blade.  Switch to left hand, which is weaker.  More quivering in the straight front hold (even today)  then on the right.  Can’t do as many up/down or rotational turns as with the right…but more than I could do on the first day.

Whole-arm swings, to loosen up, in a figure-8 pattern, right handed first for a gradually increasing number of swings,  then left handed , passing hand to hand in the middle.  Then added another exercise on Thursday:  elbow “motionless” as much as possible at my side, wrist only moving blade in figure 8 swing without letting my right shoulder lean sideways or forward.  A work in progress, not there yet.   Several other exercises, also not yet mastered, but working on them.

I’m working on both sides, because I have a big strength difference between left and right that I want to reduce, not because it’s in any of the written or demonstrated exercises.   The one-sidedness goes back to the encephalitis I had as a child, which left my left side much weaker for quite a while and was exacerbated by playing tennis in HS–right-handed–which selectively strengthened the already strong side and left the weaker side to itself.   I’m thoroughly enjoying the saber and hope I end up “straighter” on top after another half year or so.

Meanwhile this week Horngard II is sitting at 32.8K words in spite of everything else that’s gone on.

Writing about sword-wearing, sword-using characters, and then handling some antiques owned by others, pushed me to indulge my own long-term interest in blades.   Some of mine are blades I used in fencing lessons (with SCA instructors) and those have been more or less permanently blunted.    I bought a bated (blunted from birth, so to speak) longsword when I needed to see what it felt like to carry, how hard it was to handle in indoor spaces and in the woods, etc.   It was very helpful to get that physical feel of it, especially walking around and through ordinary obstacles.  I have a few sharps, on which I practiced slicing things and poking things to see what it felt like (and also because it’s fun to slice the bottom lumps off  2 liter plastic bottle hanging from a tree limb when it’s full of water and the water squirts out and…yeah.  Juvenile fun with swords.)  But all of it (including the spear, the bill, and some other more period bits I have) have contributed a lot to scenes in which someone is doing something with a sword, spear, bill, etc. When I borrowed a scythe and scythed some tall grass, that was another experience that enhanced my writing about Gird.  Same with the crossbow.  No amount of just reading or watching movies or videos can provide the body-feel of handling things yourself, whether it’s kneading a loaf of bread, digging a ditch, riding a horse, knitting a sock, or…using a weapon.

I was gifted a gorgeous USMC Mameluke officer’s sword by friends who knew I hadn’t been able to get one at the time, but I don’t “play” with it…it needs sharpening (barely sharp now) by someone more expert than I am.  It has a curve, and it’s definitely a weapon, not just a display item.

But as the Paksworld books have progressed, and I’ve studied more about swords, I’ve wanted to add a lighter-armed cavalry type to the mix in some areas.  And I’ve long wanted a curved blade that I didn’t feel as protective of, as I do my dress sword.    I have a character now, in Horngard I and II, Nasimir Clart, owner/commander of Clart Cavalry, who is a quintessential cavalry man, familiar since Xenophon wrote about horse training and cavalry operations in ancient Greece, and described vividly (for the 19th century) in the excellent series of books by Allan Mallinson, about a young officer’s career through the Napoleonic wars  and beyond.   And I could not envisage Clart without seeing someone with lance and saber.

So when Matt Easton of Schola Gladiatoria, one of my online sources of info on antique weapons and fighting styles, had a review of a reproduction of the 1796 pattern British Light Cavalry saber that he thought got all the details right, right down to the distal taper of the blade…I was hooked.  It is a substantially “beefier” blade than the Mameluke,  much wider and heavier, with a deeper curve, trading grace, speed, and ease of maneuver for power.  So here it is, side by side with its scabbard.

I’m reasonably sure Nasimir Clart chose a different hilt…something he would find more stylish that also gave more hand protection than the simple knuckle-bow here.   But for me, this will do just fine.  It was getting dark by the time I got back from feeding the horses this evening…discovered it on the porch on the way out…so I didn’t have time after unboxing it to change into something more appropriate to take a picture of the first swings with it, but yes…I took it outside (it’s WAY too big to swing around inside) and found the balance strange in one way but quite nice once I started swinging it from the position to cover the back to various cuts in front.  This is a saber for serious cavalry combat in the lightly-or-no-armored style.   I will be doing things with it, for the same reason I used the others…it’s research.  That it’s also fun and good exercise is beside the point.  I absolutely did not buy a saber for the fun of it.   (Stop laughing, you there in the back.)

Bringing Nasimir Clart into POV status as a character has led to the conclusion that I need yet another sword.   A cavalry saber suited to such a man as Nasimir Clart, for instance.  And paging through images of sabers (and sabres) for ones that were combat weapons, not just dueling weapons, has led me to….the 1796 pattern Light Cavalry Saber of the British Army.   Which is  not only a handsome, graceful blade but had the reputation as a killer, for its ability to lop off body parts, including heads.   Is it “in period” if the Paksworld stories were written as 13th-14th century?  No.  But Paksworld isn’t this world, it has dwarves as master smiths, with advanced (compared to ours) skill in mixing metals for steel…so they *could* make the right steel for sabers of that size and type in Paks’s day, allowing light cavalry a weapon superior to anything in the “real” (our-world) late medieval period.

Clart’s company is not exactly 18rh-early 19th c. light cavalry, either.  But it has some of the same uses: scouting, communication, covering troop movements, harassment of enemy troops, hit-and-run attacks.  It’s highly mobile, flexible, in ways a heavy-armored cavalry isn’t.  The company deploys both lancers and swords, mostly this type of saber.   And…I’ve never held this kind, just the modern ‘fencing” saber.  Not the same animal at all, a house-cat to a tiger.   In the area of “replica” swords, most sabers have been duds–the opinion of experts far more knowledgeable than me.  However, there are late 18th, early 19th c. sabers that “looked right” for Nasimir Clart (who sat in my head, saying “Maybe, too thin, maybe, too curved, NEVER, and YES!”)  Yes to the very popular 1796 pattern British Light Cavalry Saber.  Which has now, according to several experts, been reproduced accurately in all respects after using an actual antique, not pictures, for the model.

Before the final version of the combats I’ve written Clart into, in the new books,  I expect to have my own replica saber in hand, to feel how it moves in the hand, what it ‘does’ to wrist, elbow, shoulder, and back in use, and thus (if needed) improve the way I wrote the scenes.  There will be vegetable parts on the ground.   For those interested in what this saber–as an antique and as a replica–looks like I suggest looking up Schola Gladiatoria on You Tube, one of my favorite channels (along with Tod’s Workshop).   Or you can search for British Saber 1796 and see a lot of images of various versions of it.

And though Museum Replicas is out of stock with it right now, in the future some fine day I expect to find a package from them with my very own saber in it.

Meanwhile, Clart Company’s first cohort, with its commander and junior captain of the first, have made it out of the foothills and onto the plain, while the second cohort and its junior captain, are spending another few days back in camp at Horngard, while their lightly wounded recover more, and the second in command (senior captain of the second) who was seriously wounded either stabilizes or dies in Fox Company’s medical tent nearby.  Golden Company is awaiting the arrival of an expected Andressat contingent with the Count in attendance and some gifts for the king, and in between, a trade caravan will show up unexpectedly.  Everyone’s avoiding the Pliuni road becaause Pliuni is in bad odor thanks to its behavior in Horngard I.

Instead of a snippet in words, a sketch–the kind of thing I often scribble on the back of an envelope or letter or any paper handy…this time the back of a 4×6 card, first with the gel pen and then colored in with colored pencils.   I made it Tuesday evening to clarify the terrain and situation for members of the Discord writing group I’m in–most of them not familiar with my work so not at all with Paksworld.    I don’t submit something every week, because they like shorter chunks of things, and that means fragments.  But what I often want most from a first reader is not detailed comment, but whether or not the flow of action makes sense or is jumbled.  In the first draft, I don’t worry about stuff that may not even be there in second draft.  (in fact, in this case I was editing right up to it being my turn because I knew they might have a problem visualizing the terrain without a lot more words than I wanted to spend…this area was described when the allied forced came in several days ago.

This doesn’t cover the entire area of the ambush sequence but the most relevant bits.  The card was white, but messing with the white balance enough to make it look white wiped out the other colors.  I need better light in the study.   Anyway.  North is up.  The Pliuni Road leads west and up to the citadel, or east  about 10 days’ travel through rows of hills (think the rumples of a kicked rug) to the walled city of Pliuni, about 5-7 days south of Valdaire.  That steep cliff on the left (contour lines close together) is the base of one of the “horns” of Horngard.  That lower hill on the right (contour lines farther apart) is the first hill east of the big cliff.   A waterfall comes down the cliff into a pool (out of scale)  with a bar at the east end that makes an easy ford for horses or people.  The stream flows east (and is also out of scale).  The red-brown seed-shaped ovals represent the horses of Clart cavalry exiting the citadel valley right before the ambush attack from across the stream.   Halveric Company (2 cohorts) is camped on the left, and Fox Company on the right.  Those triangular pointy bits are tents.  Green with squiggles inside is thick vegetation.  Ambushments include across the stream, from head-high bushes and young trees, and down from the end of that hill.  On the far side of the creek, there’s a hill like the one on this side; the attackers are armed with bows (blackwood longbows, a few crossbows, a few recurved bows) and the brush has been “sculpted'” by careful pruning to allow clear shots with maximum cover.   The distance across the creek is only 10-15 yards.  The vertical distance from the hilltop is somewhat more, but gravity adds punch.

In version 1 of this sequence, Nasimir Clart and his horse were wounded; in trying to dismount from his horse, an archer on the hill got a lucky hit into the back of his thigh.  However, that contradicted the sequence in “Bank Transfer” when he comes cantering across a ford some distance from here (not this ford) and is feeling great.  A deep wound in the back of the thigh would not let him ride again that soon, so the first major change in the story was changing out where he was and giving the injury to someone else.  (Sorry, Reassigned-Victim.)   Clart has not been a POV character before, and once turned loose he proved a superb one, producing good plot faster than I could write it.

Leaving aside the concussion problems (and I would LOVE to leave them aside forever but apparently…that’s not on my Bingo card),  the times I’ve run headlong into a serious problem with a book–a book-stopping problem–it’s been because I didn’t think things through enough.  A lot of writing happens internally (for me, anyway)  and sometimes–just like missing your turn when you’re driving somewhere because you were thinking about something else–I’m writing merrily along talking on the mental device and fail to notice when I’ve missed the exit and need to look at the map.  What map? you ask, knowing that there is no actual map for a discovery writer like me.    Ah…but there is a sekrit, sekrit, unknowable map you have to take on trust, I say, when you set out to sail the perilous seas of fiction writing.

Going wrong gives you a chance to rethink, add thinking to a period of distracted un-thinking, and think better.  The tangle I found between “Bank Transfer” and Horngard II included multiple opportunities, and I’m glad sit here on a rainy morning, with chili being reduced on the stove to the correct thickness (the big kitchen spoon stands upright in it), the horses munching hay in their stalls, and a feeling of deep satisfaction because I went out at midnight, sniffed the wind, and shut the barn door off of the stall that has one.  (The wind smelled wet and tropical.  The rain source is that dying tropical storm of the Pacific coast of Mexico.  The wind had been humid, as if there was water up there somewhere, but smelling local–undertone of dry and autumnal.  The shift was very noticeable at midnight and so were the big fat wet clouds blowing across the moon.)  The smell of warm oceanic “wet” air masses is something you learn from many sniffs.

Day before yesterday, conferring with Rancherfriend E-, I decided that one change to grease the knotted ropes of the two stories would be a change in character.  Tried it out Sunday night, and yeah, it worked, in theory.  Then I went from blocking (jotting ideas down) to first drafting a new version.  Suddenly this character I’d never used as  a POV before took off down the trail like a rocket, trailing clouds of spent plot  and many words behind him.  VERY different from the guy he replaced or the guy who replaced him.   Didn’t need a nudge, or for the writer to suggest what he should do…he just tore off and did his thing and it was RIGHT.  There’s one tiger who’s not going to return to being “minor” again, I’ll bet.   Getting into the right person’s head–letting that person carry the story–really works.  Sometimes you have to step out, but it slows the story, makes it less immediate.

Back on October 5, I emailed my agent Horngard I.   Heard nothing.  Finally called and asked (in the intervening days had a wonderful house-guest and we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves, talking, listening, reading, writing  (me, then reading her bits of it),  giving horses treats, enjoying the good weather, etc., etc.   And cooking.  She made chocolate pudding and brownies-from-scratch.  I made chili from scratch.  We had chili more than once (I just ate the last bowlful in the pot for supper and have two “short” quarts in the freezer.   My mouth feels very tingly.)

So when I reached my agent (who was out of the office when I first called), turns out that email never arrived.   Re-emailed, and it got there.  So we’re back to square one in terms of waiting to see what he thinks of  it.

House-guest will be working on a compilation of Paksworld stuff for me so I don’t have to search through all the books to maintain continuity and accuracy.   Just the books (eleven, counting Horngard I) are now totalling 1.6 to 1.76 million words, with lengths between 155,000 and 176,000 words each.   The Paksworld short fiction adds another 100,000+ words.

The eighteen non-Paksworld books — the 7 Serrano-Suiza books, the 7 Vatta books, the 2 McCaffrey collaborations,  the 2 standalone books — are all over 100,000 each, mostly in the 120-130,000 range.   So that’s another 2.25 million words, roughly and a grand total for the books alone of 3.8 to 4 million words.   Plus the short fiction scattered through various markets (over 20 anthologies and ?? magazine publications.)   I am a “wordy” woman.  By no means the most words published of anyone in the field, but also not the least.   Not the best, not the worst, either.

I sure hope Agent likes Horngard now, and we can get it to the market and into print sometime next year.  And that Horngard II progresses without a hitch and gets me to 30.   (No, that’s not an ultimate goal, just an interim.  Love those zeros flipping the next number over.)

Horngard II is now coming along, though it’s run headfirst into a short piece I wrote this past summer.  Headfirst as in–as they are now–they’re incompatible in who was where when.   Something has to give way in one of them: when something happened, where something happened,  who met whom at this other place.   Neither Horngard II nor “Bank Transfer” has gone public yet, fortunately, but…which “darling” is going to have to be killed for the whole narrative to work?  “Bank Transfer” was supposed to slot neatly between Horngard I and Horngard II,  and the ambush scene AND the arrival of someone else (Ferran Count Andressat) on the north road into Horngard are now occupying that space & time.   Usually the short Paksworld stuff is either remote in time or space from one of the books–so no problem with overlap.   However, “Bank Transfer” was going to connect to later Horngard books through some of its characters, but it’s essential that the connection doesn’t conflict with what’s in the books.  Right now, it’s…being tricky.

The best time for an ambush is when the people you’re planning to attack are off-guard for some reason, and in a place that makes it easier to pick them off than for your side to be picked off.   If you have a small force and the other side has a large force (which you want to reduce a lot, rather than just kill one of)   you want a way to  confine them to an area (like a hog trap for wild hogs) where you can kill them without coming into full contact…trap them where a tide’s coming in fast, in a gorge with a flash flood coming, in quicksand, in any treacherous ground where they don’t know the hazard (e.g. that you’ve pre-dug pits with stakes in them and a light cover of dirt on something very breakable) , in any narrow declivity, etc.  Minus modern technology,  people traveling together in a group are unlikely to see through thick vegetation, around corners, over hills, in a fog, in heavy rain, while it’s snowing.   For one thing, they’re paying most attention to the nearby people they’re moving with, so they don’t bump into them or get bumped into, or trip over minor obstacles on the road or trail.   Even if you have the larger force and are ambushing a smaller force, and intend assassination rather than wholesale destruction, you’ll try to make it easier, less dangerous to your side, by picking the right place at the right time.

The details differ with place, season, local weather, experience level of the ambush designer (and more) but in these stories the lack of gunpowder and ordinary (to us) explosives, and the lack of modern communications, is always a factor.  Here and now, light-speed communication can show a criminal’s face and the license plate of the car they’re border to border, sea to sea faster than the criminal can drive there–or fly.  Not foolproof…hundreds of notices are issued each day and the farther the source, the less attention someone’s likely to pay to it, but the criminal cannot *count* on being unrecognized.   The current GA trial involving (among other crimes) the invasion of the Cotton County, GA, elections office is a perfect example: surveillance tape caught the county employees who let unauthorized people into the building…actually doing so.  And then caught them in the room with the voting machines.   But in Paksworld–with no cameras, no phones, no electric lights, no internet, no way for a city official in one city to contact an official in another (“We chased a gang of robbers out of our city; we think they headed off east toward your city…they were all mounted and one of them had a spotted bay and white horse about 17 hands…”)–it’s much easier for a gang to get away, safely ahead of pursuit, and be unsuspected ordinary travelers in another city.

…was sending NewBook, Horngard I, back to my  agent in the hopes he doesn’t find I’ve left a large chunk of orange text (or even one orange word) in it so it can go straight on to a potential publisher.   (Orange, I’ve found, is what will catch my attention and remind me that I had doubts or concerns about a passage.)

It’s down to 175,026 words, 802 pages from its greatest length (which I think was north of 185,000.)  And it’s a lot better since my agent Said Things and sent it back twice for more work.   In the sheer glee of being able to write fiction again at all, and trying out the new Plot Thing (which isn’t the Plot Daemon I had before–feels completely different) , I let it run very freely.  So it acquired a lot of–attached bits, as on a ship that’s been at sea a long time–and while some of the barnacles were interesting in themselves, they were slowing down the story too.   My agent didn’t tell me to cut it–in fact, said “Don’t worry about length,” but I knew it was kind of baggy or shaggy in spots and needed trimming.  In the final version, having gotten some problems fixed, I was able to be firm with myself: “Does the reader need to know this stuff *right now* ?  Prove it.  No?  Chuck it out.”  Running alongside that was the internal command to cut one word per page (or more, but at least one.)

I rediscovered all those techniques I hadn’t needed to use for five years (mid-February will be the 5 year anniversary of the latest concussion)  to cut wordage without cutting meaning.  Of course, the familiar “cut extra modifiers,  cut “there is/are” phrases, change inactive to active verbs where possible” cuts, always useful.   But also the sneaky versions of weakening verbs: progressive tenses (“He was beginning to think…” vs. “He thought” or “She was running as fast as she could” vs “She ran as fast as she could.” ), subjunctive voice (not always a problem but it isn’t always needed when it shows up), any time you see a “helping verb”…question it.

Today is gray, chilly, gloomy.  Yesterday was a glorious sunny, clear, just cool enough day.  So as soon as I sent it off, I went out for a walk on the land.  Without binoculars or camera, just walking (and resting a couple of times) for almost 2 hours.   I’m going out again this morning, but probably not as long.

In the “always longer than I want” sequence from writing to seeing a book printed and on shelves, where are we now?  Into the realm of conjecture and the unknown:   it’s out of my hands at this point (unless of course agent sends it back, but I don’t *think* he will for more than “typo on page 497, line 18” kind of thing.)   It’s Agent’s job to find it a home with a publisher or declare he can’t.  This finding it a home can take anywhere from a week (if someone’s panting in the wings, eager to grab it) to months (if everyone’s attitude is “She uses to write some decent books, but our list is full and we don’t know when we’ll have an opening and anyway she’s probably lost her following and she’s old and it may not be that good…”

If  one of my former publishers wants it, then it’s “always longer than I want” for it to go through the steps of publication:  assignment of an editor for that book and tentative scheduling,  Editor’s editing, my changes to satisfy Editor,  the cover art discussion, etc, etc,  shift to Production, where it will get on the formal production schedule  (the one that is “hard” as opposed to “sorta squidgy), a copyeditor, and then I’ll get the copy-edited version to check over and return, then the Production questions if any, then it goes to the printer, and then to the binder where it’s married to its cover and shoved into boxes and then the release date comes.  Whoopee.

If one of my former publishers doesn’t want it, and neither does anyone else, then the decision comes down to further discussion and…dunno yet.

At present,  5:26 pm Friday 12/15/2022, I’m working on page 486 of 813.  The total word count is down to 179,041.  The high in word count was I think in the 183,000+ range.  I don’t think it ever swelled to 185K but I didn’t check every minute.   There’s still stuff to be added and stuff to be taken out.  This round of revision includes a lot of  word-removals.  Most are singles, some are multiples, and a few are “That whole paragraph: OUT!”  Ideally, from the feel of it, this needed an overall shrinkage of about 10% .   In other words, 18,000 words gone.   Very roughly, that’s one word out of every line of the ms, 23 per page.  I’m not on target for that amount of shrinkage, and there’s still a little to be added.