Paksworld

We had two long tables almost full, and a day of food, music, knitting, swordplay,  talk (LOTS of talk),  and beautiful weather.    In honor of Anne McCaffrey,  I had changed the table decorations to include horses, more green, and a large bowl (standing in for the cauldron of plenty in Irish mythology) instead of a wicker cornucopia.   We toasted her life, achievements, and influence in mead brought for the purpose by one of the guests (he made it, which was even more special) and those of us who’d been fortunate enough to meet her or work with her told Anne stories.

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Some distractions I can work right through.  Others…I can’t.   Thanksgiving is one of those others.   It’s the holiday on which I indulge my love for cooking and entertaining occasionally.    Occasionally, because I do a huge lump of work for Thanksgiving, and I’m not going to put out that much effort every week or so, or I couldn’t write books.    Holiday music is another.   Again this year our choir is singing Messiah with the Austin Symphony.   And this year, the first rehearsal was today, Saturday, and the next is Monday…yes, this Monday, the Monday before Thanksgiving.  EEEEEPPP!!! Read the rest of this entry »

Research is part of any writing, fiction or nonfiction.   If you know you’re going to write about shoemakers in New England in colonial times  (just to grab for a topic I know nothing about), you would have a limited topic and your research would need to be “deep”.   If you know you’re going to write a novel set in an invented world (SFnal or fantasy), then your research must be broad and had better be deep in some areas.

But no matter whether your topic is narrow or wide, some of the research you do won’t make it into the book…at least, not into a book anyone will want to read.  Most of us have read a book that “taught us more about penguins than we really wanted to know,”  written by someone who did a lot of research and wanted someone else to share the pain.

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OK, it’s a tiny little spoiler to let you know this far ahead that there might be a gnomish appearance in this book, but you had a gnomish appearance in Kings, too, so…it’s something even the spoiler-aversives up with it must put.  (And a gold star to the person who recognizes where that bit of inverted language came from and how it changed the way I write.)

Beyond the break is a snippet.

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