Paksworld

The first week out is the week that determines (nearly always) whether a book will reach “bestseller” status.     It’s the week that agents watch over,  checking BookScan numbers regularly, checking rankings any place they can find one and making their own calculations of raw numbers v. other books’ raw numbers.   In the first week,  LIMITS sold a few fewer hardcovers than ECHOES, and a few more e-books, to wind up with a modest increase of total hardcover/ebook sales in the US market.   So thank you, all of you who wanted to and were able to buy a copy  in the first week.    Thanks for talking about the books, and introducing others to them.   You’re the ones who keep a writer in bread & butter (and dark chocolate.  Can’t forget the dark chocolate.)    Read the rest of this entry »

Lytherus.com chose me for a Featured Author Week, and the interview and blog post are now up–with a contest for copies of Limits of Power.

The interview’s fairly serious; the blog post is about the fun and the possibilities for humor while writing.

[correction of title & link, thanks to Sue]

Since several of you have pointed out mistakes in the new book, I think we need a thread for that, so I can (eventually) put an Errata notice on the main Paksworld website in a proper scholarly way (there’s a tough of sarcasm in that last phrase.  Don’t miss it.)    I’m going to keep the errata threads separate for each book. Read the rest of this entry »

First, thanks to all of you who’ve now charged into the book and are giving me some feedback in Spoiler Space.   I’m so glad it’s working for you!!   And to all those who use Spoiler Space to avoid spoilering the book for those whose copies haven’t arrived or who haven’t been able to read it yet because of Real Life.

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As  King Mikeli’s younger brother has demonstrated in previous books, he’s an impetuous, energetic youngster with a gift for ending up in difficulties.   He’s also warmhearted, well-intentioned (in his own way) and brave.  He was supposed to be one of those minor characters who decorates the margin of the story,  illuminates the context of major characters.  However, Camwyn  did not stay marginal.   Quite the contrary.  Rather like Arvid, in that respect, he showed up at the oddest times, doing things that put him center stage.

It’s not that Camwyn wants to cause trouble for himself or others.  But a lightning rod person will always snag any electricity around, and he does.  Hence…a snippet.   By keeping it annoyingly short, I can just barely avoid spoilers, but may it bridge the gap over A-Kon, when I won’t be around to post anything. Read the rest of this entry »

This is a small bouquet of gratitude to someone on the list who–reading the snippet–found an inconsistency with Oath of Gold and emailed me privately about it overnight.  So this morning I hauled out my copy of that book, and the manuscript, and knew he was right–it was an inconsistency and it needed to be fixed, if possible.   The book’s already past copy editing, so I didn’t know if it could, but I set to work looking for the smallest possible fix that wouldn’t mess up any other previous books.

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Via my agent’s tweet,  here’s a site with info on Limits of Power and a look at the cover.     Hurray!

Meanwhile, I’m struggling with a couple of scenes from Book V that don’t want to be written, which undoubtedly means I’ve messed up somewhere else…but still, things have to keep happening.

And so you get a snippet.

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Remember how I said I was impressed and grateful that NewEditor (hereinafter known as Editor) had read through the whole monster pile of the preceding books?    The proof is in the editorial letter I just received this afternoon.  WOW.  As in,  I have landed in the lap (OK, laptop or desktop or whatever) of another great editor.  An editor who is going to help me make LIMITS and Book V better than I could possibly make them on my own.

It’s not that I doubted her editorial skills before,  especially since (like anyone who’s been in the business this long) I inquired delicately of people who’d worked with her and got rave responses.   But with so much backstory to get through, and all her other work, I wondered how much she could grasp of the whole Paksworld mythos, having to read at top speed.    And there’s also the chemistry thing.   Sometimes it’s not the book, the writer, or the editor…but just a lack of spark between editor and book, or editor and writer.

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Editor sent me a couple of  versions of the cover for the US edition of Limits of Power–I can’t share them yet, but I liked one better than the other and hope they go with that.    I liked it a lot, in fact.   I think this will be a good, attractive cover, one that will work well on the shelves, and make most of you happy.    One of the cover characters…well…better wait.   Spoilering when I’ve asked others not to spoiler isn’t fair.   Suffice it to say that there’s no “Fabio” on the cover.

We also had brief  email discussion of some changes I’d made and others contemplated.  She’s on her second read-through and marking now, and I’ll be getting the marked ms. soon to work on.

Progress today on one chapter, not so much on another.    Quitting for the day, where the book is concerned, to work on other things.

It looks like Limits of Power will be a summer book, not a spring book, next year.   My new editor took on the heroic task of reading the entire Paksworld corpus before leaping into the new book–and I was delighted that she did so.   But that was eight previous books–none of them skinny–and she had other duties besides working on my book; she wants to do one more read of that before giving me her revision requests, which I won’t get until the end of the month.     So instead of trying to rush the production schedule, which is a good way to introduce accidental errors,  the planned release date has been pushed back.     It’s not set in stone yet, but it’s “fairly firm” for June.

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