Paksworld

Could not resist.  Could. Not. Resist.    So what do the next ten days have in them, besides waiting for Oath of Fealty‘s release?    Not an orgy of anticipation, because Lifestuff rolls on, ignoring a writer’s desire to wallow for even one day in the joys of  authorship.    Here’s a sample:

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Distractions of the usual type are things that must be done–distractions not sought out, but imposed.   For instance, official paperwork that must be filed by a given date,  business mail that must be dealt with, scheduled maintenance of human, animal, machine, repairs of human, animal, machine, house.   Then there are the everyday distractions of friends, family, online places to socialize.

But then…then come the biggies.    For me, it’s something I don’t know much about, that comes to my attention in a time and way that creates an automatic pursuit response:  facts known to exist, that I don’t know yet, are like the squeaking of a mouse to a fox, or the scent of a fox to the hounds..and these are the hardest distractions for me to resist.

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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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It’s fortuitous that in Book III, I’m  presently dealing with winter weather (shows how little progress I’ve made lately!) because today it snowed.  It hasn’t snowed like this here for years, and I decided that a long walk in the snow would give me more recent sensory inputs than my memory of the most recent previous snow.    Read the rest of this entry »

I was actually making progress on Book Three today when a friend emailed to tell me that a plane had flown into a building that I drive past regularly, in Austin Texas.  I tried to stay glued to Arvid (who had informed me plaintively that I hadn’t provided any food for him and during his earlier misfortunes he’d been starved for two days…) and did manage to offer some coarse-ground meal (spelt, I think),  onions, and raw redroots, but reality trumped the fiction writing.  Read the rest of this entry »

My husband’s niece lost her husband this morning to a sudden, very severe infection that started last week.   This isn’t a part of the family I know well, but I’m very sorry for her and their two children.

Between Ash Wednesday meditations and this,  no writing has been added to the new book, though I dealt with a lot of writing business today.    One of the bits of writing business was getting set up for an online chat, that will take place with John Hemry ( author of the Lost Fleet books as Jack Campbell and JAG in Space books as John Hemry) and fans, on March 16 between 4 and 5 pm Eastern Time.   Our editor suggested that we talk about researching for writing, and we’ve exchanged ideas and questions today.

The fan portal for the chat will be through Suvudu.com, and if you wander past there, you’ll see that online chats are fairly common.   John and I have known each other for years–it should be a lot of fun for all.   I think it’s great that modern communications give us the chance to do things like this.  I hope you’ll come see what happens.   (And yes, there will be reminders…)

…for ConDFW (I leave in the morning, won’t be back until Monday night, and may not post until Tuesday),  Editor sent me an ARC (Advanced Reader Copy, also known as a review copy) of the book.   (Let me tell you, hearing that people had bought one on e-Bay, when I didn’t have one, was a strain on my equanimity!)   However, I now have something for show-and-tell, even though it doesn’t have any of the artwork. Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday, Tuesday,  I finished the short-short (currently titled “Point of Honor” and I don’t know when it will appear), the intro for the short-short, and about half the essay, which I then looked at with utter loathing.  It may’ve been the headache.   New glasses last night make for better seeing, though not yet (thanks to many other things on the to-do list) to a lot more done on the book.  Less squinting, though.

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This morning, Editor asked me to please write some posts for the Suvudu.com blogsite.    Sure, I said, and began fiddling, but was interrupted by a needed trip to an optician’s shop to order new glasses.  This afternoon, Editor asked me if I had any short fiction related to the new book.    Maybe something had been cut?  Maybe I could write a short-short?   Huh?  And I thought “O waily waily woe, I’m trying to write an essay (that wasn’t working well yet) and anyway I’m not good at short-shorts.”  (Yes, even experienced writers have self-defeating moments.)

And even as I thought that…up popped a notion of what might work.  Bing! Read the rest of this entry »

I haven’t talked about actually writing book three lately, what with so much else going on–sometimes answering comments used up my available time.  But work is progressing, just slowly.  I hope to speed up.  Read the rest of this entry »