Paksworld

While we wait another couple of weeks for the US release of Kings, here’s some more background to consider.   Back when I first discovered the complexity of Paksworld (as much as was needed for that first set of books)  I knew that having so much magic, of one kind and another, would almost certainly displace technological innovation, wherever magic worked well enough and was economically viable.

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Yes, I’m having one today.  It’s a double-digit, divisible by 2 and 3 and 11 and 22 and 33, which makes it a very fun number.   Rather playful.   Twice the age at which hobbits become adults (I should ask the friend who reminded me, on my 33rd, that if I were a hobbit I’d now be an adult.  “Am I?” I asked.  “No,” she said after looking me over carefully.  “You must be an elf.”   Needless to say, she and I are still friends.   I think I’ll ask her again today.)

However, that’s not the point of this, exactly.  The point of this is to consider character birthdays, name-days, etc. and hear what your ideas are about the best (or most interesting) birthday celebrations in books.   Right off the bat there’s Bilbo’s (I know, you were all leaning toward that one, but the birthday girl has one prerogative…)  But what other literary book-birthdays have struck you as being done right.   No restrictions on genre or age-range or anything…let’s enlarge the celebration.

One of the topics UK Editor suggested for a blog post for the Orbit Books site was “favorite fantasy dragons” with a lead-in to Kings of the North.    Those of you around in the great burgeoning of SF/F in the late 1960s and 1970s will remember that “dragons” were fairly common.    Some belonged to older mythologies  and some had been softened and tamed and made almost bland.

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What do you read when you’re sick in bed?    I had some long illnesses as a child, and since I started reading very early,  reading while confined to bed was always part of the day.   My mother could chart my fever by how fast I read, whether I put the book down and closed my eyes, etc.  (She preferred a thermometer, though, having trained as a nurse.)   Among the signs I learned to watch for in myself was reading the same page over and over. Read the rest of this entry »

You were supposed to get another blog post yesterday, but I was flat in bed for the second day with a high fever.   Today I’m well  enough to spend a little time at the computer (how much will depend on whether the fever comes back.)    I’ll try to answer comments today in all my online locales but not sure I’ll get to them all, and you’re probably going to be short a blog post or two.

However, my UK editor confirmed that today is release day for Kings of the North in the UK.    Would love to hear where it’s spotted first!