Paksworld

For  those who would like a look at Chapter One,  Editor has now given me a link to share, but it was 117 characters long, so I ran it through TinyURL for you.  For reasons known only to the Secret Masters of Software NonAgreement, anything after it comes out in bold, too, so I’m saying what I need to say above it.   I still don’t know when my blog entries will appear at Suvudu (the Del Rey SF/fantasy blogsite) but will let you know when I do:

http://tinyurl.com/49dzcbh

Author’s copies of the UK edition of Kings of the North arrived yesterday and look really good…the cover is stunning.   Including the double-page-spread map.   I think you in the UK will see the actual books in the stores earlier than we in the US, if I understood  UK Editor’s email.    Thus it’s time for a reminder that any spoilerish comments  need to be clearly marked with “Spoilers” in the subject line so that those who haven’t gotten the book yet aren’t given tidbits they don’t want…and ideally no spoilerish comments will appear until mid-April. Read the rest of this entry »

Or, what about clothes?   Since I’ve been asked some detailed questions about the clothes in Paksworld.   This post can’t possibly answer them all, but will suggest some of the sources I used in considering what clothes the characters wear.

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One of the problems facing anyone trying to run a large establishment new to them is staff.   Old staff–competent?  Trustworthy?   Or dishonest, lazy, troublemakers?    New brooms who have done this before may sweep clean, but someone coming into a completely strange situation may not know where to start, how to evaluate any existing staff, and where the organization needs shoring up.

So it is with Dorrin Verrakai, who would be quite comfortable running the North Marches stronghold–a familiar military establishment–but not the Verrakai holdings.    By escaping from her ancestral home, and absenting herself from the Tsaian court, she’s ensured not only her survival but her ignorance.    A military camp and a ducal household (especially with all those now-orphaned children)  have little in common.  Hence this snippet.

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The morning began with the discovery (not unexpected by me!) that the dozen or so ants on the counter yesterday had become a superhighway of ants along the edge of the counter, up the wall, and into one of the cabinets.  They had also constructed a network of smaller routes on the counter itself.  Some of them had crossed the Great Chasm between counter and stove top, with the result that the sugar bowl (these are sugar ants, much to be preferred if you must have ants) had ants in it.

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31 days (or 30 by the time most of you see this) and thus time for a snippet.   In fact, a snippet from the very beginning of Kings of the North.   I don’ t think, this close to release, that it’s going to be spoilerific for anyone.

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It took longer than it should have, thanks to getting sick (at which point my brain goes duuhhhhhhh… and can’t see the sense in a sentence) but Editor Revisions are second-run done.  Now to see if Editor agrees with what I’ve done with what she did.

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Today has been not-quite-typical but sufficiently full of writing stuff that you might find it interesting.   Though it started not with writing stuff but with the car making odd noises the last time I had it out.

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One of the difficulties of restarting a story last seen twenty years ago is that for readers who read the original books when they came out–even five or six years later–it feels as if there should be more time between Oath of Gold and Oath of Fealty than there is.   Intellectually, these readers may grasp that the second Oath picks up where the first one left off, but they’ve experienced years in between and they aren’t the same readers they were when they finished the first three books.

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As I’m writing this at almost 10pm, we’re coming up on the changeover from 41 days to the release of Kings of the North to 40 days (which, as anyone in our choir would tell you, at this time of year leads inextricably to “Forty days and forty nights…” (a Lenten hymn.)

And then…less than 40 days to release.   At this point, I always get twitchy, edgy, worried.   My brain invents disasters that will make this release not like any other release, but a total unmitigated failure.    The drama that normally goes into the plot goes into my daily life. Read the rest of this entry »