Paksworld

Editor has asked, quite reasonably, for more information about elvenhomes.   I vaguely remember writing a post about it,  one of the background posts.  But did I actually hit the PUBLISH button?    Do any of you remember?    Here are some questions (if you feel like answering them) that will give me a handle on how much readers grasp of the elvenhome thing…(in case you haven’t seen the post about it.)

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Remember how I said I was impressed and grateful that NewEditor (hereinafter known as Editor) had read through the whole monster pile of the preceding books?    The proof is in the editorial letter I just received this afternoon.  WOW.  As in,  I have landed in the lap (OK, laptop or desktop or whatever) of another great editor.  An editor who is going to help me make LIMITS and Book V better than I could possibly make them on my own.

It’s not that I doubted her editorial skills before,  especially since (like anyone who’s been in the business this long) I inquired delicately of people who’d worked with her and got rave responses.   But with so much backstory to get through, and all her other work, I wondered how much she could grasp of the whole Paksworld mythos, having to read at top speed.    And there’s also the chemistry thing.   Sometimes it’s not the book, the writer, or the editor…but just a lack of spark between editor and book, or editor and writer.

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Here’s a space for those of you who enjoy speculating about Paksworld and the future possibilities of the storyline.    It’s here so that those who don’t want to read speculations that may turn out to be spoilers can avoid it.  (So–if you hate spoilers, do not read this thread.  OK?)

Keep in mind that this is for YOUR speculations.    We need to keep a kind of wall between your speculations and my planning, for various legal reasons, so I won’t be reading this thread myself.   If anyone has complaints about behavior on this thread, contact me offlist through the website, but be sure to use a subject line referencing this space, and in the body remind me who you are, and then what the problem is.    If trolls show up, or someone’s being rude or abusive–let me know.   Otherwise, this is your sandbox.

Since I already let this kitten roll out of the bag somewhere else, it’s loose here as well.    It’s spoiler-ish, but not a true spoiler, and it’s insight into how my mind functions on “deep logic” issues.  It’s slightly (but only slightly and not in essence) different from the version on the other venue.   However, if you fear even the faintest tinge of spoilerishness, maybe better skip this one.

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Editor sent me a couple of  versions of the cover for the US edition of Limits of Power–I can’t share them yet, but I liked one better than the other and hope they go with that.    I liked it a lot, in fact.   I think this will be a good, attractive cover, one that will work well on the shelves, and make most of you happy.    One of the cover characters…well…better wait.   Spoilering when I’ve asked others not to spoiler isn’t fair.   Suffice it to say that there’s no “Fabio” on the cover.

We also had brief  email discussion of some changes I’d made and others contemplated.  She’s on her second read-through and marking now, and I’ll be getting the marked ms. soon to work on.

Progress today on one chapter, not so much on another.    Quitting for the day, where the book is concerned, to work on other things.

It looks like Limits of Power will be a summer book, not a spring book, next year.   My new editor took on the heroic task of reading the entire Paksworld corpus before leaping into the new book–and I was delighted that she did so.   But that was eight previous books–none of them skinny–and she had other duties besides working on my book; she wants to do one more read of that before giving me her revision requests, which I won’t get until the end of the month.     So instead of trying to rush the production schedule, which is a good way to introduce accidental errors,  the planned release date has been pushed back.     It’s not set in stone yet, but it’s “fairly firm” for June.

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I mentioned here that I would be on the BBC World Radio’s “The Forum”…the taping of the panel discussion (with three people in London and me in Austin, TX) will be tomorrow (early morning, my time)  and will be broadcast this coming Sunday, May 20.   If your radio station doesn’t carry the program, you can access it as a podcast here:

From 01:00 Pacific Time on Saturday,  http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/forum .

The lineup has changed a bit–the other panelists will be David Rodin and Elizabeth Quintana.  Should be a very lively conversation.  I’ve read one of David Rodin’s books now, but did not know Elizabeth Quintana had replaced the other panelist until yesterday.    Luckily the BBC forwarded several of her publications for me to read.

One interesting discovery has been how differently I view some things as a fiction writer instead of an analyst or philosopher.   (The “veteran” part comes in there too, but the fiction writer effect is stronger than I had anticipated.)   The others’ concentration is on the “outside” of individuals–and mine, of course, is on the “inside”–on the way that individual biology, culture, and personal experience interact to create motivation for behavior.

Though this is technically off-topic for Paksworld,  I felt it would be interesting enough to many here to give you a heads-up about it.  (And let’s hope the edited version doesn’t have the font change that happened the first time around!)

So there I’ve been, chugging away (some days better, some not) on Book V, and also trying to read outside that box a little because of the BBC panel discussion coming up, and suddenly…I’m on the phone to the lovely folks in London (who have been uniformly encouraging and lovely)  to talk about the upcoming program.   My day-writing in fantasy has been separated from my night-reading in SF by other things, some of them LifeStuff (like knitting while waiting at the hospital for my husband to be done with a test procedure…even a slow knitter like me can accomplish a fair bit of 2×2 ribbing in 3 hours!), and thus I’ve been able to cope with the difference in cognitive function each requires.

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A productive day is a day on which at least 2000 words pile up.    I’ve been dealing with 1000 word days, 850 word days, 1600 word days, even 1854 word days…but the clear-sailing ahead 2000 word days have been thin on the calendar.   Today was one of them, plus some.

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You won’t see this for a long time, but I can’t resist:

As he lay wondering about this, a sound moved in the darkness, a sound for which–like everything else–he had no name.

And no, I’m not saying who “he” is or what’s going on.  There’s a book and a large chunk between now and then.

Nor is this a good topic for open speculation.    You might accidentally hit on details that would spoiler it for many.