Paksworld

UK sightings of Echoes of Betrayal are coming in…so it’s out there a week before it will be out here.

The book will be released in the US next Tuesday, February 21.   I will be at BookPeople in Austin on Friday, February 24 to read from it and sign copies.

I was reminded again this weekend of the way death comes seemingly out of nowhere to shatter relationships new and old.   A friend of mine in another state was participating in a serial transport of a rescued dog from the shelter where it was first found to its future home, some two thousand miles away.   The puppy stayed at her house overnight, and the next day she drove it to the next person in the chain.   The person set off…and she and the puppy were killed in a weather-related road accident.  You can read about it on my friend’s blog, which includes a beautiful tribute to the remarkable woman who was killed.  Please do, in fact.

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Having had a final round of “Just fix this bit right here…” from my agent today, Book IV is now with NewEditor.     All but that chapter’s work got his approval earlier in the day; the past 8 days have been busy but apparently fruitful.   Book IV grew back up to 170,800+ words, as my agent felt I had compressed some parts too much.     (Since the book has been, since it’s supposed first-final-length, everything from 180,000+ down to 156,000 [when stuff was clearly missing!] and many, many points in between, a tad under 171,000 is probably a healthy weight for it.)

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In the book I’m working on,  the Company is once more camped near Ifoss, as in Sheepfarmer’s Daughter.   In that book, the Company camped on the west side of town.    Now they’re camping on the east side.  Moreover, the town’s changed some (as most towns did, during and after Siniava’s War.   Paks at that point didn’t care whether the town had a grange;  it does…on the west side.    Ifoss is still the smallest of the Foss Council cities, but its wall is no longer complete; expansion after Siniava’s War (the war to end wars, in the locals’ minds) led them to breach the wall to the northwest, while retaining most of the rest.    Several inns are mentioned in Sheepfarmer’s Daughter, and without my notebooks it didn’t occur to me to reuse any of the same names.  Until now, when–looking for something else–I ran across them.  So  there’s another bit of revision to be done.

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Agent had some worthwhile comments on Book IV which sent it back to me for more work.   This will result in an added chapter early in the book and the “perking up” (my term, not Agent’s)  of some fairly large chunks considered “flat” as well as showing one character more active and tough than before (hadn’t realized that character had softened that much between books.)     Some of that will involve shortening, and some will involve lengthening, as usual.   Agent has contacted Editor, who gave permission for an extension to do the work he suggested, pointing out that we could send her the version I sent him today, or a better version in ten days.  (Agent has had the book since January 20 and I appreciate the fast, analytical reading Agent gave it. )

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My mother was a terrific knitter (and seamstress, and designer, and needlepointer, and…well just about everything.  Engineer, nurse, built some furniture, designed everything from houses to ranch pens to clothes, carved wood, painted pictures…and made biscuits I will never equal.)    Watching her pull together a knit-in-the-round sweater with no seams (especially one of the patterned ones) was a visual metaphor for what I do writing books (I realized this years later, after she’d died.)    You could talk to her while she was knitting a sleeve.  Often you could talk to her while she was knitting the body.  But when it came to The Joining, when the two sleeve tubes were mated to the body tube at the correct angle , with her signature little cable running up the join,  when there would be enough double-pointed needles in the project for several hours  to make it look like a torture device, there was no talking.    There was silent removal of empty coffee cup and setting down of a filled one.

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What you send to Agent or Editor varies with the kind of book, but I’m now working on the not-book parts of the submission package.   NewEditors who are assigned in the middle and latter parts of a group of books–especially something as complicated as the Paksworld books–usually appreciate something that will get them up to speed quicker than just reading the whole (in this case eight previous) books.   Copyeditors always like to have a list of unique character names, words, etc.   And that’s what I’m doing now, taking a break from the wildlife management report for a few hours to work on this.

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Book IV left via the electronic express this morning, after a brief conversation with Agent on the topic of titles.   It’s gone off with an obviously not-suitable (but descriptive) title that will ensure Editor realizes it needs a different one.    It’s going first to Agent,  who will read through it just in case I’ve missed something really awful, and then to Editor.    And it’s out of my hands for right now, which is WHEE! time.

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OrbitUK  has me in their Author Spotlight this month.   I’ve also been told my author copies are shipping this week.  Yay, hurray, and rejoicing by writer (esp. with Book IV about to head for the big city.)

For US readers,  the mass market paperback of Kings of the North is coming out very soon, and the hardcover of Echoes of Betrayal releases February 28.   Even better (for those who still buy hardcover books) I’ve been told it will be on the Random House Triangle displays at Barnes & Noble.

Now I really must get back to work.   It’s kind of like the cross-country of three-day-eventing….you have to ride the whole course, including the last fence.

What I think (and devoutly hope) is the last pre-submission scene to be ripped up and rewritten was finished this morning by 10 am local time.    I was writing like crazy until 2:45 am when I pretty much froze up, joints and brain together, and started again this morning at 7:30am.  You are reading the typing of a very tired writer.

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