Paksworld

UK sightings of Echoes of Betrayal are coming in…so it’s out there a week before it will be out here.

The book will be released in the US next Tuesday, February 21.   I will be at BookPeople in Austin on Friday, February 24 to read from it and sign copies.

I was reminded again this weekend of the way death comes seemingly out of nowhere to shatter relationships new and old.   A friend of mine in another state was participating in a serial transport of a rescued dog from the shelter where it was first found to its future home, some two thousand miles away.   The puppy stayed at her house overnight, and the next day she drove it to the next person in the chain.   The person set off…and she and the puppy were killed in a weather-related road accident.  You can read about it on my friend’s blog, which includes a beautiful tribute to the remarkable woman who was killed.  Please do, in fact.

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I can see the bubbles of desire to talk about the book.  I deeply sympathize (yes, in that way) so here is a spoiler space for that purpose.  HOWEVER…those of you who got the whole book early may NOT mention anything past the end of what’s posted online.  OK?  We don’t want uncivil wars around here.

Spoiler Space Rules:  If you don’t want any spoilers, DO NOT READ below the break, and DO NOT READ any comments to this thread.  You  have been warned.  Spoilers are roaming around loose and unconfined on the other side of the fence,  so if you venture beyond the break, you will find some.   Those of you who don’t mind a bit, having read the first 50 pages online, or not, are free to have encounters with loose spoilers.

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The history page on the Paksworld website has now been updated and expanded.   Ever wonder what they use for money in the different realms?   Want to know more about trade?   You folks were showing enough interest that when I went into the file to fix typos (and let’s hope I didn’t just create more typos)  I decided to add more information.

My US publisher offers 50 pages of a new book free every Friday, and today that’s Echoes of Betrayal.   Read fifty pages, plus some paragraphs I wrote about the process at http://sf-fantasy.suvudu.com/2012/02/50-page-fridays-elizabeth-moon.html .

There’s a new page up at the Paksworld site,  history stuff mostly, to place the current books in the deep-history context.     Yes, I know there are still typos.  My webguru caught several, but missed a few, as did I.  We’ll fix as our mutual schedules allow.   If you go there from the front page instead of the new page link, you may need to refresh your browser.  The history page is under Info/Background, and Background was previously empty.

Having had a final round of “Just fix this bit right here…” from my agent today, Book IV is now with NewEditor.     All but that chapter’s work got his approval earlier in the day; the past 8 days have been busy but apparently fruitful.   Book IV grew back up to 170,800+ words, as my agent felt I had compressed some parts too much.     (Since the book has been, since it’s supposed first-final-length, everything from 180,000+ down to 156,000 [when stuff was clearly missing!] and many, many points in between, a tad under 171,000 is probably a healthy weight for it.)

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In the book I’m working on,  the Company is once more camped near Ifoss, as in Sheepfarmer’s Daughter.   In that book, the Company camped on the west side of town.    Now they’re camping on the east side.  Moreover, the town’s changed some (as most towns did, during and after Siniava’s War.   Paks at that point didn’t care whether the town had a grange;  it does…on the west side.    Ifoss is still the smallest of the Foss Council cities, but its wall is no longer complete; expansion after Siniava’s War (the war to end wars, in the locals’ minds) led them to breach the wall to the northwest, while retaining most of the rest.    Several inns are mentioned in Sheepfarmer’s Daughter, and without my notebooks it didn’t occur to me to reuse any of the same names.  Until now, when–looking for something else–I ran across them.  So  there’s another bit of revision to be done.

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Vonda N. McIntyre (a writer whose work I hope you’ve read)  has been posting some snarky comments about  the verb “seem.”     It seems that some writers seem to find a reason to seem uncertain about things going on in their books…they seem unable to say what someone felt, only what someone seemed to feel, seemed to think, seemed about to do, etc.   “Seem” has its uses (every word has its uses) but some words seem to fit a writer’s need not to say exactly what he/she means.   Thus, “seem” upholds the banner of “weasel-words.”

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