Paksworld

One of the difficulties of restarting a story last seen twenty years ago is that for readers who read the original books when they came out–even five or six years later–it feels as if there should be more time between Oath of Gold and Oath of Fealty than there is.   Intellectually, these readers may grasp that the second Oath picks up where the first one left off, but they’ve experienced years in between and they aren’t the same readers they were when they finished the first three books.

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Book IV is now just over 34,000 words.    At the moment, it seems to be settled into a more relaxed pace as I figure out some details I hadn’t needed to know before.    I have Tsaian dukes figured out, pretty much, but not all the counts and barons.  Um….that would be none of the counts and barons, except the names of the ones on the Royal Council.  Who’s hot-tempered?  Who’s phlegmatic?  Who leaps to conclusions?  Etc.  Moreover, who has a marriageable daughter?

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This book…I’ll swear this book wants to drive its writer crazy.   Where did this new character come from?   And why, once she arrived, didn’t she behave like a normal character (if Kuakkgani are ever normal, that is?)    Not only do I now know a lot more about how someone becomes a Kuakgan (some of it I knew years ago, but I’ve learned more in the past couple of years) but I just found out what can happen to a young (in experience) Kuakgan during his/her first spring out in the world.

“The green blood is strong in this one…”

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Something has been brooding in the depths of the plot for this entire world (not just this book, or the previous, but I’m finding its shadows on sonar of the oldest–in story time–books, Gird & Luap as I re-read them for continuity)  for years.   Now it’s rising slowly  into view.   These are foundation-level conflicts that I’ve never really examined, having just discovered outcrops of apparent bedrock on which to put the foundations of the world 27-28  years ago.

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I now have ARCs for Kings of the North in my hot little hands (the weather turned warm and muggy–hands are definitely hot.)    There will be a contest in which someone will win an ARC.   However, due to multiple instances of LifeStuff, I don’t have the contest idea worked out yet, so the contest isn’t today or maybe even this week.   It will happen, however, because I now have a prize some of you will probably want.

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Yesterday’s 2700+ words and today’s 2000+ have rolled over the writer-odometer another satisfying amount.   More important for your reading enjoyment, Stuff has been Happening to multiple characters, some of whom are being revealed as not what I thought they were.  You may be smarter than I am and guess earlier that X is not really X but R’.    Or not.

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Sometimes I’m amazed at what the Plot Daemon has been up to behind my back.  I was not feeling well for several days after the trip, and couldn’t get more than a hundred words or so out at a time.    Far below my daily goals.    (I was waking up unsure where I was–mostly thinking I was on the train, but once still in a hotel–and the writing itself was peculiar.  I knew certain scenes would be difficult, but usually those difficult scenes come embedded in their full context.  This time…not so much.)     But underneath/behind all that, the Plot Daemon was busy.

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So I left Atlanta this morning and wrote 2700+ words on the train, mostly about poor (ummph, you don’t know him yet.  Let’s just say that he’s young and was brash, but reality has laid some clue-bats on him lately.   I didn’t expect he’d ever become a POV character, as he wasn’t my favorite of the available young-and-brash stock, but sometimes they simply o’er leap all obstacles to find themselves on center stage with very important lines to say–and say them with panache.  Or some word of that type.

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So…page proofs are done (check) and some family LifeStuff probably/maybe resolved (half-check) and I’m back “on book”.   Yesterday, after a dietary error that kept me close to one room in the house, turned out to be a very productive writing day anyway (3001 new words, in addition to cleaning up some continuity problems I discovered while working on the proofs of Kings…no, B- did not tell his father about hmmmmmph at Autumn Court, becuase hmmmmph didn’t start until AFTER Autumn Court. when ummmm went mmmmph.  Yes, hate me.)

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I spend a couple of hours with Book III yesterday (all I had, due to Other Things) and had fun with the inimitable Arvid.   I don’t know how much of this will fit in the final Book III–but it’s such fun to write.  As with the story of the King of Pargun and his difficult daughter Elis, that we put up  on the publisher’s blog site, I’ll find it a home somewhere even if it can’t stay in the book proper.

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