Paksworld

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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Yesterday, in preparation for going over to the ranch to bring home some of the frozen meat from Big Bull,  we needed to reduce the bulk of the un-cut bones of Big Bull that came home with us initially.    I make soup out of beef bones (good soup) and then the well-cooked-out bones are stuck in the garden soil to decompose.

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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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Under the heading of research:  yesterday disappeared in 13-14 hours of preparing for and beginning the process of converting a 1500 pound bull into meat in the freezer.    This isn’t myfirst experience of home butchery, but it’s certainly the most strenuous and exhausting, and finding one’s limits (no, I could not lift the bull’s head by the ears…nor work the whole time without lengthier rest periods than some of the others involved) is not fun.

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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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It’s Veteran’s Day in the U.S.,  which is a day of remembrance for more than those who died–remembrance also of those veterans who came home and quietly set about rejoining the fabric of civilian life–who became, or returned to being, farmers, carpenters, plumbers, police officers, parents, and so on.

Fictionally, veterans have had interesting “remembrance”…sometimes as foolish, self-centered old men boring everyone with their stories of wars past and demanding privileges that (on examination of their war record) they didn’t deserve…sometimes as heroes looked up to by the community for leadership.  In real life they’ve been reviled (as some were during and after ‘Nam), nearly canonized into faux sainthood, neglected (all too often), used for photo ops by ambitious politicians (all too often), and treated in all the various ways non-veterans have been treated.

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No sooner was I into a new POV in Book Three than the whole words thing came down on me.

A character “intoned” something.   Now we all now that “said” and “asked” are the safest ways to denote speech: they’re just about invisible and don’t stick out in unwanted ways.   But every once in a while the way of saying or asking matters, and in a situation where a physical gesture won’t do.  In this case, a gnome is quoting The Law.   It’s like a preacher quoting the Ten Commandments…he’s almost chanting it.   Intoning it, in fact.

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