Paksworld

Because of the ARC contest…I started thinking about trying to host all (OK, only the main) characters for a big dinner myself….sort of a mini-convention of Paksworld characters.

The long, long table outside (hey, I get to control the weather for this one–crisp, cool, sunny.  The best autumn weather.)    The meetings, the greetings, the eating, the conversation–I really would love to hear them talking when there’s no need for it to fit into a story context.   Read the rest of this entry »

You are the host.  You invite a character to dinner.   Which character from the Deed or Oath, and what do you cook for him/her, and why?    Try to fit the answer in just one or two sentences–this isn’t a demand for vast culinary expertise.   Something like “I would invite  A, and cook B (as simple as “bread” or as elaborate as you please), because (something about A that makes liking B plausible.)  Needless to say, you don’t have to be able to cook the meal in real life.  It’s a fantasy world.  All valid entries (includes character name, menu, reason) will be assigned a number, and the number entered in the drawing for the ARC.   I will co-opt my webmistress to pluck one from a hat.

Post entries to this topic as comments.   Entries must be in by midnight November 2 (the night of our concert, so I may be able to do the drawing within a day or so.)   When I do post the winner’s name, winner must contact me with a mailing address within a week, so we can avoid the holiday jam-up at the post office, which starts earlier every year.

I’m hoping you all have fun seeing who wants to invite whom for dinner, and what kinds of interesting menus are involved.    (I know what to cook for some of my characters, but not all of them.  If you’re actually dying to do menus for more than one, just for fun…sure, you can, but only the first one you send will be in the drawing.

I now have ARCs for Kings of the North in my hot little hands (the weather turned warm and muggy–hands are definitely hot.)    There will be a contest in which someone will win an ARC.   However, due to multiple instances of LifeStuff, I don’t have the contest idea worked out yet, so the contest isn’t today or maybe even this week.   It will happen, however, because I now have a prize some of you will probably want.

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Sleep, Shakespeare said, knits up the raveled sleeve of care.   I wish something would knit up the raveled sleeve of prose when loose ends of yarn are hanging out and there’s not a knitting needle in sight.    However, the authorial crochet hook is working hard.  (My mother, who was incredibly good at needlework, pointed out one day that knitting and crochet are the same thing, really, except geometrically in some relationship I forget.  Upside down and backwards, maybe.)

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Though I can almost hear the cries of Woe! No! from here, the braiding process always results in dropping some overwritten sections (or parts of them) and tightening this and adding to that.  Unlike cooking, where once you put the salt or the spices in, they’re in for the duration, writing allows do-overs…trying whether something works and then removing it if it doesn’t.  (Would love to have had that option the time I put way too much tarragon in the tarragon chicken!!)

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(GRUMP: just erased the whole post I was about to send.  My right little finger hit *something* (I wasn’t looking at it, so don’t know) and it all disappeared.  So this is not the post you would’ve had but the post’s general gist as I remember it after that moment of shock, useless attempts at recovery, and then writing a GRUMP.)

This week has been about reorganizing the POV sections into chronological order and writing connections when the lack of them became apparent.  I’ve also been noting places were cuts could be made later, to accommodate the additional material that will bring the book to the conclusion I’m trying to achieve…for which I need a LOT more room.    Right now the book’s just under 163,000 words,  but it changes daily up and down as this is trimmed slightly and that is added for connectivity and this other bit now turns out to be wrong, and here I’ve added a chunk…etc.    There’s a lot of front-loading in this book, so anything trimmed there has to be carefully done so the plot-threads can run smoothly on, without fraying to nothing later.

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In Kings of the North, which only the alpha readers among you have yet read,  the POV characters leave Aarenis at the end of the campaign season, so whatever happens there between, say, a few tendays before the Autumn Evener  and Midwinter is offstage for that book.   And in that book, what happens in Aarenis isn’t relevant to that book, but it is relevant to the next…the one I’m on now.

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