Paksworld

Talk about mixed blessings…I get this monster down to a reasonable length, and then someone says “Yes, but…” and I start working on that, and boom! comes a plotbomb that explodes all over the scenery, showering it with many-many words.  Read the rest of this entry »

Book II has now undergone several procedures, starting with cloning and a new identity (has a hospital bracelet with the name of its primary and the number of its clone-identity), followed by (for that clone) extraction of all POV chapters for that character into another file.  Both the primary and the POV clone are on life support for the duration, ensuring that nothing’s permanently lost.  Read the rest of this entry »

Today I had three projects going…well, I had three projects I was supposed to be working on at once, but I really don’t have a three-track mind anymore.  Read the rest of this entry »

Losing something you’ve written is the #1 Writerly Woe–in this case a post I wrote a few hours ago, hit a wrong key, and lost…Boom! It had been a witty (I thought), entertaining (I hoped) post about another Writerly Woe that occurred today.  Lovingly crafted to bring you the utmost in amusement  and maybe a little insight into writer psychology.  Read the rest of this entry »

Last week was complicated by the dress rehearsal and performance of Messiah, followed by (perhaps predictably) a major migraine and then (not predictably) a gut bug.    So progress on the book last week was minimal.  I can write nonfiction while somewhat feverish or with a migraine, but I can’t write fiction.  Read the rest of this entry »

As you may have noticed, I also cook…bake bread, make stock and soups.  So the kitchens of Paksworld have always interested me.  What do the people eat, and how do they fix it, and why?

With Midwinter Feast coming up (theirs, not ours) this seemed like a good topic to talk about. Read the rest of this entry »

A productive, 2000-word day, in which I finished the POV section I’ve been working on.

A Halveric sergeant and a couple of tensquads meet the unsurvivable and survive.  Well, sixteen of them survive.  For awhile, anyway.   My view of Halverics has always been from the Phelan side…and I thought they were more alike than they are.  (More spoiler warning!)

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Fewer words (1000) today, as I paused to deal with other writing-related chores, including fine-tuning the timeline for the series of battles.   And then there was the trip to the city, so M-  could ice-skate and I could not-fence and instead sprawl on the couch and discuss various writer-things with DRW (whose comments on crossbows you have, I hope, read) and J- and C-.   Spoilers will appear below the cut, so choose your level of preferred knowledge.

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3061 words today.

That battle I was talking about?  It’s unfolding rather differently than I planned originally, but better.   To argue with the A-Team “I love it when a plan comes together”—I love it when my plot-daemon knows better than I do what should happen. Read the rest of this entry »

I’m basing a lot of my longbow archery on information derived from the Mary Rose bows, as reported in (among other places) Strickland & Hardy’s The Great Warbow, which includes a history of the longbow in use from the Battle of Hastings up to the Tudor period.   (It’s also a great temptation to spend way too much time on details that aren’t plotworthy…how to conserve and then revive bows that have been buried in silt and salt water for centuries, for instance, something no one is trying to do in this book.  On the other hand, the horrible but effective treatment one noble received for an arrow wound in the face may show up sometime.  Not right now, though.)  Read the rest of this entry »