Paksworld

Here it’s spanned, loaded with a little wad of aluminum foil (no goldfish crackers at fencing class last night) and ready to shoot.

Available from New World Arbalest –email them if you want one.  It’s not up on the online catalog yet.   Mine is 13.5 inches long; the prod when the bow’s not spanned is 8 inches.

Ammunition–try things.  I’ve used the goldfish crackers, the corner off a saltine cracker, M&Ms, carrot and celery sticks (inch to inch and a half long work better than longer ones, and trimmed fairly narrow but still stiff), wadded up paper and aluminum foil.   Oh, and the foam ammunition for a toy gun.   I expect it would also work with dry peas and beans (haven’t tried yet)

It’s been small steps this week, for various reasons.

There was the first test of the new meat saw over at the ranch, which resulted in the need to make lamb curry (need is a relative term.  We like lamb curry a lot.)    But that took up a morning–not the single cut, but cleaning the meat saw afterwards.   In Paks’s world, there are no big meat band saws…there are big butchers with sharp knives and cleavers in the cities, and experienced persons elsewhere.    It’s easier to clean a knife than a band saw, but harder to cut up the carcass.

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I think I mentioned, some time back, the video Reclaiming the Blade, about the history of the western sword, and how it was used.

Hank Reinhardt, co-founder of Museum Replicas, was on that video, and though he died in late 2007, the book he was working on is now coming out from Baen Books, titled The Book of Swords.  Toni Weisskopf, his widow, took his various drafts and brought them together.

I was sent an ARC of this book, and have been looking it over for a couple of days…and I have to say, I’m impressed. Read the rest of this entry »

This has nothing to do with Paksworld topics, but it’s related to the writing life, so….

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Those of you who’ve read Diana Wynne Jones’  The Rough Guide to Fantasyland know that the typical food of fantasyland is stew.  Maybe with bread.  Maybe, if you’re really lucky, bread and cheese both with stew.  Or alternately.

I’m not a foodie (lack the qualifications), but I do like to eat, and when I started writing the Paks books, I didn’t know about the “stew” convention.  Even though there’s some stew, it’s because I felt it fit that location (and pocketbook) and I had great fun inventing other dishes.   Food preferences and eating styles reveal character and offer multiple thorns for plot and character and setting to attach.

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But I’m telling you anyway.   One of the ways you get multi-sensory accuracy into a work is to get it into your life.   Back when I was first writing for publication, I was immersed in a busy life that included regular doses of excitement and gore: I was a volunteer with the county EMS, and our station lay between a military base in a dry county and the nearest bars.   Car wrecks (lots), fires, explosions, fights,  death by violence and death that came as quietly as a sigh.   If it’s part of a human and it breaks, bleeds, or leaks–I’ve seen it.  I also had a rideable horse then, and rode almost daily.

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