Jun 13

As the Zeroes Roll Over

Posted: under Life beyond writing, the writing life.
Tags: , ,  June 13th, 2015

So tonight the ms. stands at 70,000+ words.   This is after chunks removed and chunks added over the past few weeks.   Front end writing toward the end, and backfilling gaps both.  More chunks remain to be removed, but I’m waiting on the larger ones until I’m closer to the end.   There’s quite a bit of back-filling to be done; some of the writing has been fairly skeletal…the skeleton needs muscle, tendons, skin, and clothing.   Aiming at a finished length of ~120,000, which means 50,000 to do between now and the end of August.  Doable as so much is fleshing out the scenes and the transitions between scenes  (drat–I just has an opossum on the window-screen beside me.  Young one, but well past the cute stage.)  The story itself is moving well into the final stages.

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Jun 08

POD Deeds of Honor Is Now Out

Posted: under Collections, Deeds of Honor.
Tags:  June 8th, 2015

The good news:

The better news:
A 20% off discount code for  you folks on the Paksworld blog who purcase via the CreateSpace Store, to be used at check out: 38MKS5UD. (This code won’t work at Amazon.com, alas.)

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Jun 05

The Shepherd’s Life: Off-Topic Book Recommendation

Posted: under Life beyond writing.
Tags:  June 5th, 2015

 

HerdyShepherd-book-2

I strongly recommend James Rebanks’ The Shepherd’s Life.   Some of you may already know about @herdyshepherd1 on Twitter (where I first ran across him), and you may wonder if the book is as good as his tweets.  Better.   You can find lots of reviews now, and his status on the bestseller lists (way higher than I’ve ever been, and deservedly so).  He’s not just reminiscing about his life as  a shepherd…he’s presenting an alternative life view to that most of us are familiar with.  In brief, he’s from a many-generations-farming family in the Lake District, a region that, as he says, is perceived by England as  a national playground, in which the only encounters between those who live there year ’round and those who vacation there tend to be confusing to both sides.  Read the rest of this entry »

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Jun 03

Lesser Bad Guys

Posted: under the writing life.
Tags:  June 3rd, 2015

I have been struggling for some time with a lesser bad guy who is one of those characters you wish would make better choices–and you give him chances to make them–but he (or she, as in Barranyi in the DEED) just will not do it.  Barra’s reasons were mostly pride, arrogance, resentment…she was furious that Paks had a chance to be a paladin and the gods didn’t choose *her*.  Basically, Cain’s dilemma…how come Abel’s sacrifice was accepted?   This one has very different motivations. Read the rest of this entry »

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