Dec 31

Christmas Present: Snippet #7

Posted: under snippet.
Tags:  December 31st, 2011

Episode 7 of Sergeant Vardan and her patrol during the Pargunese invasion.

Read the rest of this entry »

Comments (15)

Dec 30

Christmas Present: Snippet #6

Posted: under snippet.
Tags:  December 30th, 2011

Episode 6 of Sergeant Vardan and her patrol during the Pargunese invasion.

Read the rest of this entry »

Comments (19)

Dec 29

Christmas Present: Snippet #5

Posted: under snippet.
Tags:  December 29th, 2011

Episode 5 of Sergeant Vardan and her patrol during the Pargunese invasion.

Read the rest of this entry »

Comments (26)

Dec 28

Christmas Present: Snippet #4

Posted: under snippet.
Tags:  December 28th, 2011

Episode 4 of Sergeant Vardan and her patrol during the Pargunese invasion.

Read the rest of this entry »

Comments (13)

Dec 27

Christmas Present Snippet #3

Posted: under snippet.
Tags:  December 27th, 2011

Continuing the story of Sergeant Vardan and her patrol.

Read the rest of this entry »

Comments (18)

Dec 26

Christmas Present Snippet #2

Posted: under snippet.
Tags:  December 26th, 2011

Continuing the story of Sergeant Vardan and her patrol of Halverics in northern Lyonya after the Pargunese released scathefire.

Northern Lyonya is, like most of Lyonya, forested country ranging from some swampy forest near the Honnorgat and along some of its tributaries, to forested uplands with rocky outcrops.    Although dominated by deciduous trees for the most part, there are some stands of conifers (and isolated conifers throughout).  Pargun, north of the river, has fewer deciduous and more coniferous trees.  Blackwood, the best wood for longbows on that world,  grows only south of the river.

In winter, with the leaves fallen,  the forest may seem easier to navigate,  harder to hide in…but not to its natives. Read the rest of this entry »

Comments (7)

Dec 25

Christmas Present Snippet #1

Posted: under snippet.
Tags:  December 25th, 2011

A Christmas present snippet that is not a spoiler for Echoes of Betrayal, though it was originally intended to be part of that book…but grew out of balance.     It actually “happened”  in Kings of the North,  during the early part of the Pargunese attack on Lyonya.   You will meet Sergeant Vardan in Echoes, a few chapters in…but her viewpoint of what she and her patrol had gone through isn’t given there. This is from her backstory, and not found anywhere but here.

Read the rest of this entry »

Comments (10)

Dec 17

Found a Peanut

Posted: under Revisions, the writing life.
Tags: ,  December 17th, 2011

Some of you know the nonsense song, and some of you don’t, but in terms of finishing this book…I found the elusive duplication, removed the elusive duplication, put the single copy in a better place in the sequence, and…then found the elusive sequence gap that I knew was in there somewhere and filled it.   Progress returned to normal for a time, with only top-level fine-polishing to do.

Read the rest of this entry »

Comments (30)

Dec 12

Choral Author

Posted: under Life beyond writing.
Tags:  December 12th, 2011

So…a week ago I was just coming home from the dress rehearsal for Messiah, feeling better about it than I had at the first rehearsal with GuestConductor.  He had slowed fractionally at the first orchestra rehearsal on Sunday night, when the orchestra also had some problems…and we’d left just as the soloists were starting their rehearsal.  Dress rehearsal was pretty much straight through, with soloists in their order, and there was another fractional slowing.  Not quite enough, and the tempo was still not steady through some of the faster choruses (speeding up as we went along.)  But by this time we had figured out what to do about it–thanks to the tools that UsualConductor had given us over the previous rehearsals (and, in my case, the years of singing under him and taking voice lessons from him.)

Read the rest of this entry »

Comments (22)

Dec 10

Reader Help Wanted

Posted: under Reader Help.
Tags:  December 10th, 2011

Suddenly I need to find something in last part of the Deed that I just can’t spot in my copy–but I’m sure it’s there.    We’ve both looked and we’re not seeing it.    Somewhere–I think but am not sure that it’s between the time Paks gets to Chaya and meets the dying king, and the time she leaves Vérella following Kieri–someone reveals that Kieri’s elven mother chose to make him look more human than half-elven.

If anyone can find that passage and tell me who said that, to whom they said it, where it was said, and in what circumstance–that would be very, very helpful.   I’m revising a scene where I don’t trust my “new” version of that story told from a very different POV and need to check to be sure they are either in accord or there’s a reason for them not to be.    It’s important to know by what chain of informants Kieri learned this.  This just caught my eye last night.

Thanks.

Comments (5)