Paksworld

…is hanging on like the last leaf on a tree in the fall.  “No, I still have juice, I’m not ready….”

I’m ready.  Next to last stitch came out this morning.  Last part of scab came off, too, so the furrow in my nose…shows.   Feels interesting, looks a bit like someone who had an accident (yes!) but not horrible.   A few places still have a dull sort of ache, where though the skin was only scraped, the bone under it was bruised.  But it’s not bad.

Along with that,  more horse feed sacks full papers and old magazines have gone out.  The supply of empty and *whole* (not rat-holed)  feed sacks from the feed room is WAAAY down.    We both have computers up and running our familiar software (well, sort of familiar, mostly familiar) .   I have learned to text images taken with the phone camera: a selfie of post-injury face the day after, and one of the much improved face (minus scabs, the sold row of stitches on the upper lip, etc.)   Still haven’t learned how to get the images in the camera into the computer.  Hmph.  But the new Paint Shop Pro is close enough to the old (aside from not letting me put several images into the work space to compare side by side) that I can certainly enjoy it.

The new Paksworld material (Horngard related) is coming along, over 3000 words, though I don’t know if they’re the *right* words yet.   I like the main character, Mardet DiAnzo.   And the journeyman baker.   And so on.

Important wildlife bit of the day:  the first yellow-billed cuckoo call  at our place this afternoon while feeding the horses.   Sun’s down and a cardinal started singing…no, not a mocker mocking a cardinal, the cardinal.  Sometimes in May birds just sing any old time.

Recovery from fall…much better.  Some stitches out, others will be soon.  Only one scab chunk left, but it’s starting to itch.

Both R- and I have new machines that are up and running;  new headphones that are more comfortable with better sound (so we can each enjoy our own favorite music, You Tube sites, etc.) without bothering the other.)  (Yes, it’s luxury.)   The complete tech overhaul is well along; there’s still some more stuff (I still don’t have a new printer; the Faure Requiem is still stuck in old machine’s CD drive, the RAM upgrade wasn’t accepted by new machine, data recovery will, I hope, pull all the old photos off old machine’s disk, but we’ll see.  But the improvement so far is MAJOR.

I’m working on some new material related to Horngard I, still uncertain if it will fit in Horngard II or be pulled out into a separate story/novella.  Happy with the feel.   I didn’t lose consciousness, even momentarily, in the faceplant, but I hit hard enough to be stunned (still sore places on bones that met the sidewalk) and there were little blinks of “not there” time from the 4 hours in the hospital, which after the effect of the 2018 concussion had me worried.  Not now.  I’ve read some seriously technical material  in two different journals and understood it fully and the writing itself tells me the brain’s healthy…or at least functional.  2018-2022 showed me I can’t write coherent, hangs-together fiction if the brain is seriously upset.  In fact, in 2018, I could barely write a coherent paragraph describing a current activity at first…so being able to write about merchants on a journey is reassuring.

Now it’s feed time for the critters.  We had an inch of rain we very much needed last night.

Having acquired the hub with an SD card slot,  I finally got brave and put my working “fiction” SD card in  (not easy as it requires me to put it in upside down…it wouldn’t go in at all first, either way, but finally did work.  I had the camera card for testing.  I still don’t have my favorite photo software on this machine, so that’s next…getting the writing straightened out is primary.

So I put that card in this morning, mental fingers crossed…and yes, both Horngard I and Horngard II are in there, apparently unharmed.  I had also saved the Paksworld stories folder, and the specific “Deeds of…” folders before the wreckage started, so I have those files again.  The stories I least wanted to have to type in from the books they were in, and  the unfinished ones and some notes.  And some others of serious interest, including some passwords.  Also realized that I’d made a continuity error in Horngard I (from Limits of Power, which I was re-reading to check up on something for Horngard II.  Ha!  Porfur was Marshal in Ifoss, not Fossnir (as I foolishly wrote in Horngard I.)   In fact, I’d conflated the layout of Fossnir to be more like Ifoss…so I’ve got to deal with all that and redraw some town plans (did not have the old town plans anywhere I could find.  SIGH.

How could I be that careless, you ask?  Well…time and concussions will mess things up.  Alone or together.  Gwennothlin, Aris’s older sister, spends some time in Fossnir, which is closer to the Andressat border than Ifoss.   Aris visits Fossnir a few times as a courier earlier in Horngard I, but there’s no interaction there (readers know he’s come from there on one assignment, but not anything he did while there.  Gwenno, OTOH, has a reason to be there and interact with people.  (Wait, you say, what is Gwenno doing in Aarenis at all?  Well.  That’s a long story. Patience.)

Turned in the letter for the annexation today, too, so I hope the city accepts it.  Probably not before the May council meeting.  Otherwise, I need to make another trip to a bigger town (with a Target store…)   SIGH.

Too many days without sunlight and my brain starts daydreaming about sleeping the clock around and waking to a sunny morning.  Kicking it out of bed is necessary, even when it tells me the balance mechanism is sub-par.  We had several days of heavy cloud with occasional thunder “somewhere” and not much actual water from the sky.  Finally however we got an inch over about 18 hours, including in a last 15 minute thunder on the roof at 1 am Saturday morning (it wasn’t the rain but a big BOOM!! overhead that woke me.)

No sun, though.  Easter Eve is a traditional time for Hispanic families in Texas to have big “end of Lent” parties, and our neighbors did.  You can tell when the pinata goes up by the squeals of the younger children and the “thwack-thwack” of whatever stick they’re hitting it with.  [drat this touchpad.  I just deleted the rest of that paragraph, with the incident of soccer ball recovery…grr.)

Skipping ahead.  Plot bomb burst in my head this morning and there’s a little over 2000 words of something new.  You may remember that in Limits of Power, Stammel dies delaying some pirates coming to the village where he’s been living.   After that, when the people return from the caves where they hid, they decide to honor him by naming children in his memory:  Matthis for the boys and Paksen for the girls (they’re not literate and never got Paks’s full name because he talked a little about having trained Paks in Fox Company.  Stammel stayed with Cadlin in that vill, so Cadlin’s next children carry Stammel’s family name as well:  Matthis Stammel and Paksen Stammel.  Everyone else names them as usual with the parent’s name: Matthis Volson, Telson, Rortson, etc and Paksen Voldotir, Rortdotir, Arndotir, etc.  This so Stammel’s name never dies out.

The children grow up knowing why they carry these unusual (for that region) names, and they…get ideas.  To live up to Stammel’s memory, shouldn’t they figure out a way to protect not just their village but the whole island?  Grownups tell them it’s impossible.  But…Matthis and Paksen Stammel are now (where I’m writing) meeting with Meddthal Andressat in the South Marches headquarters…and there’s this younger Lord Marrakai there, too.  They have a Fox Company ring…I know (I looked it up and sure enough) that Dragon took Stammel’s ring up to the Duke’s Stronghold with Stammel’s body.  But nobody would say Dragon couldn’t reproduce a copy for the village, esp. given that Dragon will certainly hear about the decision to name a boy and a girl in each family for Stammel and Paksen.  And the vill does not know Dragon took the ring to give Arcolin, so they don’t wonder when Cadlin finds it on the beam in his workshop where the sack of crossbow bolts hung.

The young folk now have a net of acquaintances between the vills–not just with the next one over but all the way around.  They’ve chosen lookout points to watch for pirates.   Pirates have come back several times, but now more vills empty ahead of invasion.  The adults are beginning to realize something might be done, though none of them have clue of what, or how, or where to find the resources.  Pirates being pirates, they decide to let that island alone for awhile to recover some stuff worth stealing and be less watchful.  Meanwhile Matthis and Paksen Stammel  travel to the mainland in one of the fishing boats to find someone who knows where Fox soldiers are.  Hence they’re in Cha…and meet someone who met Stammel (back in Siniava’s War and later) and someone who knew Paksenarrion when he was a boy in the far north (which these young people have never heard of.   That there is a mainland…but they imagine it as a really big island.)

But certainly word will go quickly to Fox Company that people who knew Stammel on this island have come to Cha…and from there to the north, to Arcolin. The right music for some of the writing is Elgar’s Engima Variations, esp. the Nimrod section.  (Earlier part went fine to Chopin Nocturnes.)

Oh, you want a snippet?   But of course.  Except they may get cluttered up with Word Sekrit Decoder Stuff.

………………………………………………………………………………………………………….(And yes the Enigma Variations “Nimrod” fits this particular passage.  Esp. toward the end where the soldier realizes…this is a story he’s heard before, years ago.

The two stood looking for a long moment, then walked forward.  Without actually looking at them, the two soldiers blocked their way to the door with the crossed staves of their weapons.  “Halt,” said one, and “State your business,” said the other.

“We need to see the Andressat lord,” said Paksen.

“Who are you?  Where from?”

“I’m Paksen Stammel.  From the island out there in the big ocean.”

“Which island?”

She had no idea how to tell him.  The island was just ‘the island’ or ‘our island’ to the islanders.   “It’s where we live; I don’t know what other people call it.”

The soldiers looked at each other.  The one to her heart side tapped the haft of his weapon on the stone step three times.  “Wait,” he said.  “Someone will come.  Not the lord, someone who will know what to do with you.  Do you have a letter or a word from someone Andressat might know?”

“We have his-someone’s ring.”

“You will need to show it.”

Matthis pulled it out of his shirt on its thong, just as another man in a long robe of yellow edged with white came to the door.  “What’s going on?” he asked the soldiers.

“These two.  Fisherfolk, I suspect, from an island.  Say they want to see the Andressat lord and that one’s got a ring.”

“An island…plenty of islands…name?”

Paksen shook her head.  “We don’t know what other people call it,” she said again.  “It’s just our island to us.  Matthis and me aren’t fisherfolk; we live up the mountain.”

“Name?” the man asked.

“Paksen Stammel,” she said.

He blinked.  “Stammel. That’s not an island name…your father?”

“No, Blind Stammel,” Matthis said.  “He lived on our island a short time and saved us—well, the olders, we hadn’t been born yet—from pirates.  He said he was a soldier somewhere else.”

“Sergeant,” the man in the robe said to one of the soldiers.  “Could that be–?”

“Let me see that ring, young man,” the soldier said.  “And your name?”

“Matthis Stammel.”  He took the thong off over his head and handed the ring to the soldier, who looked, and took in a sudden breath.

“By the Dragon, it is!  Fox Company ring.  Must be three hands of years at least since he was blinded, more like four.  I was up in Valdaire when I’d heard the rumor and then saw him riding past with the Duke.” The soldier looked hard at Matthis.  “And you’re named for him?  But not his body-son?”

“No.  Cadlin’s my father.  Blind Stammel lived in our house on the island.  That’s why my sister and I have his last name.”

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

…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.

Yesterday I was going to write a post saying I’d be talking to agent tomorrow.   Never hit SEND.   This is it:  “Another chat with Agent.  You will get a report.   As for Horngard II, it creepeth onward (it doesn’t want to cooperate unless I’ll give it all day…this splitting time with the County Tax Office’s deadline-looming Wildlife Management report doesn’t suit Paksworld, which thinks-since I’m back in it now–it owns my brain.  Does, mostly, at the moment.  But I’ve misplaced the Kieri’s First Command store I found I could work on in short snatched, which makes me hate Word’s misnamed “search” function all the more. Search INSIDE a file fine.  FIND a file (actually Microsoft’s FIND function for files is the problem–apparently it won’t look inside folders, and Word never lists the path while you’re IN a file so you can take notes.  The memory thing of TBIs kicks in when I try to remember which folder that file is in…I’ve looked in the Paksworld Stories and Stories folders, both of them, for a hint, but no.  On both drives it might be on (Data, under D: in the computer, and Data under the (folder) that replicated the D: drive on the card, F:/”

Today had the chat.  Still another draft to do.  SIGH.   As he said, and I also agree (but hadn’t agreed *in time*) , when you are first fixing a flawed ms. every fix can make it better but open up new views of what’s not that good yet.  The goal, of course, is to have it equally good from start to finish (whatever level of “good” is reached.)   Or at least a “smoothed out” reading experience so it’s not four good chapters, a boring chapter, two OK chapters, two good chapters, two real stinkers…etc.   He was encouraged because it’s definitely better overall…except….where it isn’t.  SIGH again.   He pointed out that since I hadn’t been able to write even remotely publishable book-length fiction for over 4 years, I could expect to have lost some skills, and since the cause of not writing was the brain injury…it’s more remarkable that I can now…with more revision…than it would be if I couldn’t.   I remind myself that the original Paks books had three full-length drafts before I submitted it (when I’d had only one concussion) and then the estimable Betsy Mitchell worked them over…so I’m still within the envelope.  Fast first draft, multiple revisions.  Because I don’t know the whole story, haven’t sorted out what “really” happened and thus can’t critique the whole story structure.   I’ve muttered before and say it again:  using Michelangelo’s analogy, my method seems to be to create the block of marble first and *then* cut away everything that isn’t the final statue…except that the creating of the stone and the cutting away occur multiple times.  Very messy process.  Chips of marble all over my mental and physical floors (in the form of sheets of paper covereed with notes to self, notes from agent or first readers, pages of ms. in the trash.  Only right now I can’t print any of the ms, so…grrr.

ANYway, I was working on the next little collection of Paksworld stories, trying to decide how to group them.    Several would fit into a group of “young people as protagonists”:  “Dream’s Quarry” from Horse Fantastic, a horse nomad story, “First Blood,” from Shattered Shields,  maybe “Mercenary’s Honor” from OperationArcana, because Aliam is still a young man and Kieri is in it as a squire, “Gifts” from Masters of Fantasy,   “The Dun Mare’s Foal,”  serialized here,  or       “A Bad Day at Duke’s East” (a story never published–Arcolin’s adopted son Jamis is in it.)   The story now called “Kieri’s First Command” could be retitled for its main POV character, that Marrakai kid, if there’s enough room.  It’s the first half of the longer story (which was written back when, and both file (in WS) and printout lost over the years)  that ends with Kieri  saving the Tsaian force and pushing the Pargunese back into Pargun.   Duke Marrakai is badly wounded and (IIRC) died on the way home; the Crown Prince is killed.  Kirgan Marrakai lives.

…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.

December 18, 11:43 pm and I’m at 178,644 words, p. 551 of 811, after some hours off today, working in the “picnic grove” to trim snaggy bits off the lower trunks of trees, and then the barn leveling more decomposed granite in the east stall, pick up manure in the south barn lot, feed, and yes, pet and give treats to the horses.  Progress is slow, my brain’s tired of staring at the text and trying to find words to cut.  Still finding them but not as fast now.  I think the writing was getting tighter in this part maybe.  I hope.  Clock’s ticking, calendar’s turning, I need to get this finished so I can get on with the wildlife management report and turn the book back to my agent so it has a chance of finding a publisher.

This is the season of trimming trees, too, and even though some of the bur oaks still have green leaves on them…most of the trimming’s being done right now on the cedar elms in the near meadow.  The picnic grove looks more and more like a grove of actual trees every year–not only are they taller, but the trim is defining, as I’d hoped, the “rooms” in the grove.  We won’t live to see it mature–and a later owner can of course just destroy it–but we should be able to use it a little this year.  The part of the near meadow between the grass waterway and the original fence of the house and lots, east of the main maintenance path, I hope to fence as an additional horse lot soon.  The south horse lot is turning into a “dry lot” (just dirt, which means it erodes in heavy rains, is badly compacted by constant use, and has very little grass left after several years of drought.   It needs a year or several of rest & recovery, with reseeding with a good shortgrass like buffalo or a buffalo/blue grama mix.

Outside work to accomplish these things eats up writing time; writing time eats up work /maintenance/housekeeping time.   But better to have too much to do than be bored and think there’s nothing to do, right?  Right!

Must be in bed in 5 minutes. Bye now.

Another talk with my agent last week, and I had new things to work on (which is fine, though of course I’d prefer to write absolutely perfect books up front.)  One thing he couldn’t explain clearly enough, except that one character’s sections did not work for him…and I kept looking at them and looking at them, and finally…in a “scales falling from the eyes” moment tonight, there it was.  An absolutely plain as mud and about as interesting lump of  infodump masquerading as an interesting look inside a major character’s thinking processes.

All informative.  All static.   No reader should have to read that many pages of Gwenno reviewing her reasons for doing something.  Was it accurate?  Yes, that’s how she thinks and what she thinks.  Are some of those points plot relevant?  Yes, as showing motivation.  But do we need them laid out in order like a plot summary?  No, we do not.   WHY couldn’t I have seen that months ago when I first wrote it?  (I was having a lot of fun just writing…)

Said it before and I’m saying it again…if you’re writing ANYTHING and you start thinking “If I can just make it until the next interesting/fun/exciting/ bit…that’s the part to change or just delete.”   Gwenno deserves to have her POV sections bouncy and energetic and determined as she is, not pages of her thought processes.