Paksworld

And another milestone number:  Book IV is now over 140,000 words.   This was one intermediate goal–to hit this or more before leaving for DragonCon.   Glad to be here a couple of days ahead, as it means I can visit ArmadilloCon this weekend.  Can’t spend long there, what with the packing and also the resting-up I need to do, but I can at least drop by and visit friends I otherwise don’t see between the conventions.   Next year I’ll be going to WorldCon in  Chicago, which gives me an extra day (assuming ‘DilloCon’s in the same relation, time-wise, to Labor Day weekend) and I should be able to actually *attend* it again.

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Yes, there will be a contest for an ARC of Echoes of Betrayal.   I haven’t decided just what it will be, but it will be.   I enjoyed last year’s “invite a character to dinner” contest and hope you did, too.   I won’t have a contest topic until after the next trip, so this is just a heads-up.

Husband is recovering well enough that I’m definitely heading for DragonCon week after next…by train, which means leaving on Monday the 29th.    (This is because the Sunset Limited–the train I’ll take from San Antonio to New Orleans, runs each direction on alternate days.  However, this gives me a chance to have a quiet morning in Atlanta before Registration opens Thursday afternoon.)

I will be meeting Editor there for a working breakfast, and also Former Editors (both Baen and Del Rey)  on a panel, so it should be productive.  I hope to meet some of you there, though I know some of you were unable to come.   Next year I’ll miss  DragonCon as I definitely plan to attend WorldCon in Chicago and it’s on the same weekend.    (Well, yeah, I could charter a jet and take one day off Chicon to fly to Atlanta and back…if I won the lottery…but practically speaking….no.)  The advantage of Chicon 7 is that I don’t have to change trains (large smile here.)

At any rate…suggestions for contests are welcome, though I won’t promise to use any.   (Isn’t that just like a writer!?)

Another batch of chocolate chip cookies and Saint Saëns’ Symphony No. 3 (“Organ”)   pulled me out of the slump and past the next milestone:  130,000 words.    The problems aren’t all solved, but I squeezed out a nearly shut door and went off somewhere with Kieri to look at progress along the river.

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Book faced me today with two of the most daunting scenes in the series…not the kind that twist your emotional core into a wad and then set it on fire, but technically daunting as in “How the dickens do I even approach writing this?”

One answer is “First make chocolate chip cookies and pick your music.”

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Along with finding a major blooper in Book IV when I went back to it after page proofs….I’m now at 125,000+ words.    As mentioned back when (Oath or Kings, can’t now recall which) at some point Arcolin has to consider his succession.   The other dukes strongly prefer that he marry and get an heir, and that quickly; they never liked Kieri’s plan of not marrying again and letting the domain lapse.   The king feels the same way–he wants things settled.

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Page proofs are done and should be shipped off today if I make it to the city.  Otherwise, another day (not due yet, so no screaming rush.)

As to Book IV, I had an interesting chat with a writer-friend last night, complaining that something I wrote way back at the beginning of this, and had been trying to find the right place for, really needs to go in Book IV–but I’m not sure where or how.   He had an idea, which I’m thinking about.   I like what I’ve written as I’ve written it, and it would have to be changed (in tone, in detail) to do what he’s suggested (essentially, moving from a mysterious but suggestive scene to a dream sequence.)

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I’m presently one-third of the way through the page proofs for Echoes of Betrayal and have found few (but as usual, in page proofs, puzzling) errors.  Page proofs are the last chance to fix things.  This time (probably because of the error in the Kings map) I got a proof of the corrected map, which has Lyonya on it this time.  Yay!

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The page proofs of Echoes of Betrayal arrived Friday, right after I got R- home from the hospital.   I haven’t looked at them yet, but I want to read Echoes in proof and do some serious thinking about the flow from the last half of Echoes through this book and into the last one.   Being a bit ahead allows me time to do that.

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