Paksworld

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 »

Too much comment chat and not enough new posts…silly me.

Anyway…Book kept me up until after 2 am last night.  Yes, because Book wanted me to finish something before I slept.   It reads like something written in the middle of the night with burning eyes, but it’s there, and can be chipped and polished later.

I knew when I started this that many family relationships would become entangled in the plot, because the people around Paks mostly had families (even if they didn’t know it, like Kieri.)  I did not know, however, just how pervasive this would turn out to be…I keep trying to drag Book back to what I thought was its main line, and it’s sort of like the time I tried to teach my first horse Ky to ground drive.   Book is the 1200 pound really fast horse and I’m the puny 122 pound (then, not now) person who was too stupid to wear gloves when one long rein was made of braided baling twine.

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Gnomes, you may recall, are very strict interpreters of their Law and neither give nor accept “gifts”–they’re tit-for-tat and return very precisely good for good and evil for evil according to either their own valuation or (if you negotiate) their own valuation you’ve accepted contractually.

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The power outage shifted part of my work day from writing to drawing–though with the clouds we had, it was not easy to find light enough to draw unti the power came back on.  However, the power outage hit (with the loud BANG! of a blown transformer fuse and a fried dove)  just at a critical point psychologically, when the gnome prince is interrogating his guests and important information is passed unwittingly.

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Elizabeth called and asked me to post that she is without electricity due to a blown transformer. It will take the utility company several hours to send a truck out to repair the transformer.

Ruta

2594 words so far today.  I was asking it for at least 1000–getting this much more indicates that I’m on the right trail, not just any trail.   Book is grinning.

Gnomes appeared.  I didn’t know before this that they consider the road through their lands closed in winter.    So late travelers have been accosted, and this will have Consequences.  Sure, everything has consequences, but this is upper-case-C Consequences.  The question now is whether certain persons made it across the pass before the gnomes started their winter warding.  I don’t know yet, but I know I’ll be finding out.

The total page count at this point means little, but for those who gloat over page counts,  the ms. just hit 600 and is about to lop over into 601.  But my hands are hurting, so I have to quit for a bit.  (Gee, I could do laundry, clean the bathroom, put sheets on the bed, straighten up….you can stop sniggering now.  I do sometimes do housework, just not often enough.)

After some bumps in the road (so to speak, and about which no speaking will be done)  Book consented to pick up a long trot  and make progress today.    I’ve been squiggling (technical term) through the byways of the second book to find out what was stuck in its gears, and removing same, which may be why it picked today to shake its head once and head down the trail.

I’m not sure it’s on the right trail, but it’s moving, and as Karen Pryor said about training critters, you can train something that’s moving, but not something motionless.    What’s happening?  The Count of Andressat is meeting the King of Tsaia…and I expect some jaw drops at this point.   Poor Jeddrin has gone not just around Robin Hood’s barn but many other barns to get there but he’s in possession of valuable information and so is the king, and if they put it together just right….well, we’ll see.

I’d like to get as much done as possible before the copy edits come in, but with my UK editor wanting some things done in between, there may not be as much progress as I hoped.    Today was about a thousand words–and I’m sure I’ve ripped that much of out of it since late last week. But this was true plot advance.

I’m working with an artist friend (the one who digitized the border design for the Paksworld website for me) to get some pencil sketches of a few characters and other things for the website.   I can do good landscapes and buildings and horses (well…if you don’t demand Leonardo-like accuracy for the hocks!) and some objects, but have never seriously worked on faces and costumes.  And I want these to be sketchy-sketches, not completely finished–suggestions, not “the final word,” so that you can continue to imagine the people your way if you want.

It’s easier if you can tell an artist–like this actor/actress/picture in a magazine than if you expect them to come to a face with a description in words.  Artists are visual.  Writers are wordy.  (I’m also visual, constantly reaching for the pencil, but I’m not as skilled.)

Just as I was getting well started on this,  another editor (UK edition) popped in needing more background material, so I spent Friday night and part of Saturday writing up some stuff for that edition and shipping it off, so she’ll have it when she starts work tomorrow.  It may not suit–but her description of what’s needed makes sense and I should be able to get it done fairly quickly.

Then the artist sent me the first sketch, which needs some modifications…and I really should get on with the object things I want to do, on my own.   (No, I’m not neglecting the writing.  This is in between, in breaks.)

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

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Long, long ago, when I was writing the proposal for the current group of books, I wrote a nice long chunk that I thought would be likely to stay in the book all the way to the end.  I didn’t really think it would be chapter one, but in the book as then envisioned, it would have been close up in volume one.

As volume one did its rapid expansion last year, complete with the final burst of plot-bombs, this long chunk slid into book two.   Surely it would be the first chapter of book two, I thought.  As book two has done its own rapid expansion, that chunk slid toward the middle of the book, where it lodged in Book’s throat.  Periodically, in the course of adding newstuff, I’d re-read it and think “Needs a little touching up now, but I’ll catch it in second draft.”

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