Aug 08
In the Gap
Posted: under Background, Crown of Renewal, Life beyond writing, the writing life.
Tags: Background, characters, craft of writing, Life beyond writing, the writing life August 8th, 2013
In the gap between sending off the revisions and hearing reactions to them, I thought I’d discuss a few more things about Paksworld and the series you’ve been reading. Still no spoilers for Crown of Renewal, though, I hope.
As I mentioned in a comment yesterday, the series shifted from my original plan for a long story about Kieri Phelan to a consideration of how forced change affects people in midlife. I began it after we’d had one, and as friends had lost or were losing their jobs (again!, and several years after they’d just begun a recovery from the previous downturn, at a lower level) in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis. So I had a lot of direct knowledge of how forced change–even good forced change (because that happens to some)–plays out in real peoples’ lives. But at the same time, the invented universe I now call “Paksworld” has its own set of rules and logic–and stories do too. Read the rest of this entry »