Paksworld

Thought you might like a picture of the master map on the board, ready for more lines…

Read the rest of this entry »

We moved the old drafting table over from the other house (had been my mother’s after she moved up here,  then guest-house, then son’s house for a couple of years) to what is now the spare bedroom in this house.  Only it’s not going to be a spare bedroom–it’s going to be a drawing/painting/graphics room.  The old drafting table, now well over 60 years old, is pretty beat-up, so I’m using a piece of plexiglass on top of the (rapidly delaminating) original maple veneer top.  The tilt mechanism doesn’t work anymore–my mother stabilized it with a pair of extra “legs” that fixed it at one tilt.   (Yes, I could maybe get a newer used one, or a new one, but this is the drafting table I remember from early childhood.   A “don’t touch” zone that I violated only a few times…most notably the time I used my mother’s big T-square as a hobby-horse.  Once.  The repercussions were convincing.)

Read the rest of this entry »

Thanks to the packing and preparation for moving M- into an apartment in the city, writing time has remained minimal this week…but some progress is happening, at least in my head.   I hope and expect to have a sort of microburst of writing when he’s installed, writing it all down in sequence rather than rough notes.

Read the rest of this entry »

Another snippet from Kings of the North today.   This may be one I posted in an earlier draft last year, but as someone said, there are people new to the place who probably don’t want to hunt through the archives for everything I said back then.    As before, there may be mild spoilers incorporated, so if you’re spoiler-averse,  don’t read beyond the break.

Read the rest of this entry »

I spend a couple of hours with Book III yesterday (all I had, due to Other Things) and had fun with the inimitable Arvid.   I don’t know how much of this will fit in the final Book III–but it’s such fun to write.  As with the story of the King of Pargun and his difficult daughter Elis, that we put up  on the publisher’s blog site, I’ll find it a home somewhere even if it can’t stay in the book proper.

Read the rest of this entry »

With thanks for your patience in the past week as I worked on the copy edits,  here’s a snippet (again, if you don’t want any spoilers at all, don’t read beyond the “read more” link.)    This is maybe 1/5 to 1/4 of the way through the book.

Read the rest of this entry »

….Almost.   Still a few more things to be done before shipping them back to NYC.   I need to rewrite the Dedication, write the Acknowledgments, and run back through the text to catch a couple of things I think I may have done wrong.   Read the rest of this entry »

…of copy edits corrected.    There are only (!) 39 chapters, but more words in the last nineteen than in the first twenty.

I quit after finishing chapter 20, a few minutes ago.  Tired.  Tired of all the little red marks and having to check every single one.  Copy-editing is a tough job for the copy-editor, but the CE’s job is one of marking anything that strikes him or her as off.

Read the rest of this entry »

Here’s a snippet from Kings of the North.   Location:  Vérella, the Verrakai city house.   Time:  Day after coronation of the young king.  Present:  Dorrin Duke Verrakai, the Marshal-General of Gird, the new Marshal-Judicar of Tsaia, another Marshal.

If you totally, absolutely, do not want any spoilers at all–including zero idea that something might happen after this of plot-significance–don’t read past the break.

Read the rest of this entry »