Paksworld

Last week was complicated by the dress rehearsal and performance of Messiah, followed by (perhaps predictably) a major migraine and then (not predictably) a gut bug.    So progress on the book last week was minimal.  I can write nonfiction while somewhat feverish or with a migraine, but I can’t write fiction.  Read the rest of this entry »

A productive, 2000-word day, in which I finished the POV section I’ve been working on.

A Halveric sergeant and a couple of tensquads meet the unsurvivable and survive.  Well, sixteen of them survive.  For awhile, anyway.   My view of Halverics has always been from the Phelan side…and I thought they were more alike than they are.  (More spoiler warning!)

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Fewer words (1000) today, as I paused to deal with other writing-related chores, including fine-tuning the timeline for the series of battles.   And then there was the trip to the city, so M-  could ice-skate and I could not-fence and instead sprawl on the couch and discuss various writer-things with DRW (whose comments on crossbows you have, I hope, read) and J- and C-.   Spoilers will appear below the cut, so choose your level of preferred knowledge.

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3061 words today.

That battle I was talking about?  It’s unfolding rather differently than I planned originally, but better.   To argue with the A-Team “I love it when a plan comes together”—I love it when my plot-daemon knows better than I do what should happen. Read the rest of this entry »

I’m working on a fairly complicated little battle early in Book Three–complicated in part because it includes some weapons types I haven’t previously used in my fiction in something this size.   The forces involved aren’t matched in size, experience, or weaponry…which is sending me back to the history books repeatedly to check that I’m not doing something stupid.  Read the rest of this entry »

Even though we didn’t actually end up fencing yesterday–taking a guest from far away around the land took up the time that might’ve been spent with swords–the swords were around and unsheathed from time to time for purposes other than putting bruises on one another.  There was an award to hand out, and the very special sword to show to the guest from afar, and another to demonstrate on a pell to someone who hadn’t seen that one yet.   As for the feast–this being Thanksgiving in the US–we ate like a mercenary company in Aarenis, finally in a good Valdaire inn.  Platters and serving dishes emptied with amazing speed.   Although I’m normally a casual cook and diner, I love setting out a beautiful table a few times a year, using “the good stuff”  to its fullest extent and piling on the food of all kinds.

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Adapting recipes for Paks’s world–which doesn’t have the same plants–requires some thought.   Bread is easy–Paks’s world grows several varieties of wheat and has mills for turning grain into flour.   They grow barley and rye and emmer and oats as well.   I can have any bread I want (well, not cornbread.)   Roasted and baked meats are easy.  Some vegetables are easy–they agreed to be part of that world.  Others…no.   I really, really wish I’d been able to import potatoes.  I eat a lot of potatoes.  But potatoes refused to fit in.  So did tomatoes.

So here’s the innkeeper, knowing that a caravan’s due in today, and they will want food.  And here am I, with a really good new lamb stew recipe…with potatoes and tomatoes  in it.   I’d really like someone in Paks’s world to have this dish–in many ways it fits in nicely except for those two ingredients.

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Time drifted away while other stuff happened…this was the week of going off to another online venue my editor had suggested I look into, arguing with a cranky computer, trying to get my Messiah score marked (director’s markings were online.  Computer didn’t want to go online, or stay online.  So every trip out to the new venue, and the site for the score-markings, and to the blogs to toss away the spam comments, was a lengthy adventure. )

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Book three is being a bit slow to start, due to all the other stuff going on and also some deep thinking.

But it’s at 5600 words (roughly–not exact count) as of this morning, with over 1000 words added today.

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Writers are often asked (OK, I am often asked) why I put bad things in stories about good people.   What is the purpose, someone asks, of having war, terrible wounds, grisly deaths, and torture afflict characters?    Is it to teach the character a lesson?   Did the character deserve it?  Or was enduring such things the only way to create a paladin?

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