Paksworld

With thanks for your patience in the past week as I worked on the copy edits,  here’s a snippet (again, if you don’t want any spoilers at all, don’t read beyond the “read more” link.)    This is maybe 1/5 to 1/4 of the way through the book.

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I got some work done on III today,  finishing a chapter that started out one way and ended up harrowing.    But now comes the time of hard deadlines…once out of my editor’s hands and into Production’s, all the deadlines are granitic.    Copy edit review must be done and CEs returned on time.   Other stuff’s supposed to go in at the same time or shortly thereafter.  copy edit crunch and the associated bits that must be done before getting back to III full time.   So what you’ll probably hear from me is all about other stuff, and some snippets, if I can remember what I posted of snippets from Kings before so I don’t bore you with repeats.  (Yes, of course I should note down what I’ve already posted.   But I haven’t.   Or not always.)   You don’t get any III snippets until later.

Right now, before I dive into the copy edits, we have a missing squire, a dead royal courier, a dead many-times-transferred Verrakai magelord, and once more people are looking at Dorrin mistrustfully.

…But it’s fixed now and none of you will ever know why I had to dive back into Kings of the North, fix something, email my editor about it, have her point out what was wrong with the fix, fix it again….

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…is supposed to trump youth and beauty.    But who is really old?    A half year ago, Kieri, Arcolin, and Dorrin would have said they were growing old.   Not ancient, just old.  Kieri, some of you will recall, commented to the Marshal-General (in Oath of Gold) that he was getting old and didn’t have an heir, and worried about the fate of his domain.  (He was right to worry, but for other reasons…)

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Not talking here about the obviously fantasy weddings we usually see (in pictures in the paper announcing them, for instance) between the beautiful bride and the handsome groom who might as well be made of sugar icing because they’re going to melt in the first heat of difficulty.  No, talking here about the weddings in fantasy fiction…since there’s going to be one (though not yet…don’t start making the cake now.)

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…and I am Not Ready.  Anxious, of course.   Eager, of course.  But if “ready” is supposed to include organized, all supplies in place, wardrobe chosen and prepared, etc, etc, etc….no.  Not Ready.   And thanks to the misery that’s Daylight Savings Time (every year I scream silently at the heavens “It does not save any !**! daylight!!!”  And here in Texas we pray all summer for night to come and give us small relief from the day’s heat and glare)  it is already 9:30 in the morning when it should be 8:30.

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As this is March 1, in 15 days Oath of Fealty will hit the streets in the US.    If any of you are near Austin, Texas,  I’m doing a book signing on Tuesday, March 16, at Book People (6th and Lamar) at 7 pm.   Earlier (4 – 5 pm CST) I’ll be doing an online chat at Suvudu with John Hemry (writing as Jack Campbell, author of the Lost Fleet series) and editor Betsy Mitchell, who will try to keep John and me from taking off into the wild blue.

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Sometimes a vivid imagination leads you wrong.  Sometimes trying to fix the wrong leads to a different wrong, but not a fix.  Book III again, this time with Kieri and someone you haven’t met, Sgt. Vardan of Halveric Company.

The present instance of this is a battle.  It’s not a big battle (it’s big to those in it, of course) but it needs to serve several long-plot purposes as well as a short plot purpose or three, and like many military engagements “no plan survives contact with the enemy.”  In this case, the “civilian” plan of  serving the plot isn’t working.

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In Sheepfarmer’s Daughter, the various wanderers in the woods sort of divided into Alured the Black’s people (well-armed, cohesive group under one commander, in the southern forest of Aarenis),  a group near Czardas (may or may not have been associated with any other group, and mention of “woods-wanderers” here and there.

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The author pinches her nose and shakes her head.   Book III again.  Some people, if they get out of a bad spot with miraculous (if unpleasant) intervention, would just be grateful and resolve to be better men/women hereafter.    Some people. Read the rest of this entry »