Paksworld

Editor has approved the title for Book V:  Crown of Renewal.    Scheduled to release late May 2014, though that’s always subject to change .   You will soon notice that title as a category (like, um, for this post.)

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I’d been struggling with a chapter–and specifically the first scene in that chapter–for weeks, off and on, in and around others.    It’s pivotal to a very important plotline and also to the chronological tangle previously  mentioned.   I’ve rewritten it.  I’ve written completely new versions, not looking at the old one.  I’ve cut and pasted…cut and not pasted…moved things, ripped things out, added stuff…and nothing was quite right.  Today it began to make more sense (well, I understand what it has to do better, maybe) but something was still missing.  Finally, the missing detail was outlined for me  (X needs to have found/be holding Y), but what the heck was Y?

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A:  When you get another email offering you a fantastic idea for a novel because the idea person admits to not being able to/wanting to/having time to write it, but is sure you could do it and then the two of you could split the no-doubt-substantial money.

It doesn’t work that way.   But some people still think it does…or could.  And there’s no polite way to explain (I’ve tried, with those who’ve caught me in person.)

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As some of you with an interest in publishing news already have heard,  NightShade Books is in the process of a potential acquisition.   NightShade published my short fiction collection Moon Flights.   The acquisition hangs on the percentage of Night Shade authors who agree to substantial contractual changes in existing contracts;  the terms are beneficial to writers only in that they may prevent works being dragged into the endless whirlpool of NightShade’s predicted declaration of bankruptcy.

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A listserv I’m on mentioned that a member had published a review of Game of Thrones in a major market,  so I wandered over to look.    Here’s the link: http://lareviewofbooks.org/article.php?type=&id=1543&fulltext=1&media=#article-text-cutpoint

I was impressed with the review on several counts, but the one I want to bring up here is the way other reviewers, critics, and readers talk about characterization, especially in the area of morality/ethics and spirituality.  This isn’t about GRRM’s books, per se, but about a way of looking at all books, and considering how a writer’s view of reality affects how that writer constructs characters.   Right now–in the review cited and in other writing about Game of Thrones–Martin epitomizes one particular view of reality, history, and human nature.    Tolkein is often cited as his opposite. Thus it’s important to use language appropriate to those fundamental views–which Teitelbaum does in her review,  and many others do not.

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